Doctrinal and Stylistic Elements in the Sermons of John Donne, Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes

Home , John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes

such seeds of eternity So worthie a part of divine service we should greatlie wronge, :if we did not esteeme preaclringe as the blessed ordinance of God, sermons as Keyes to the kingdom of heaven, as winges to the soule, as spurres to the good affections of m an, unto the sound and healthie as foode, as phisicke unto diseased mindes.

Hooker, V, 22.1, Laws II, p. 87. II ••• such seeds of eternity II

DOCTRINAL AND STYIJSTIC ELEMENTS

IN THE SERMONS OF JOHN DONNE, RICHARD HOOKER

AND LANCELOT ANDREWES

JOSEPH RICH ARD GIBSON, B.A.

A Thesis

Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies :in Partial. Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of M aster of Arts

Me Master University

October, 1979. M ASTER OF ARTS (1979) McM ASTER UNIVERSITY (English Literature) Hamflton, Ontario

TITLE: Doctrinal and Stylistic Elements in the Sermons of John Donne, Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes

AUTHOR: Joseph Richard Gibson, B.A. (Guelph)

SU PER VISO R: Professor G. Roebuck

NU MBER OF PAGES: 116.

ii ABSTRACT

This thesis focuses upon doctrinal and trinitarian elements. and their influence on style, in selected sermons of Richard Hooker,

John Donne and Lancelot Andrewes c The thesis concentrates upon the rational aspects of each man's doctrine and the rhetorical aspects of their style, as these emerge from the sermonso

Hooker's notion of reason tends to locate itself within the

Thomistic traditions of Scholastic thought.. Conaequently, Hooker, a radically conservative thinkert fastens upon the image of God the Father, the God of generative reason and Logos, in his approaches to the Trinityo

It is argued that Hooker does this in order to confound the increasingly fideistic and pyrrhonistic notions of many of his contemporarieso Thus, he seeks to counteract a rising tide of Augustinian thought in English letters ..

Andrewes identifies his rhetoric, and his trinitarian emphases, with i"atristic thought.. Thus the concel'lls and practices of the first Christians determine his rheto~ical style and doctrinal emphases.. He focuses upon the

Holy Spirit, as made manifest by Pentecostlal fire, in his best sermonso

His major metaphor is the coming of God's Grace in full measure at a specific time to specific people. It is argued that Andrewes' concerns are purely pastoral, so that his homiletic style and doctrinal emphases are designed mostly to guide the congregation to salvation, and to a far lesser extent, to clarify and propound doctrine o Andrewes' notion of reason, then, is a practical, rational approach to rhetorical methode

John Donne, the most complex preacher under consideration, presents a s~thesis of style and doctrine that stems from a relatively traditional homiletic school. The major influence on both Donne's doctrinal peculiarities and nis trinitarian emphases is Augustinee Thus, he focuses upon, at times seems fascinated by, the Incarnation, Atonement and Resurrection of Christe

The importance of experience, b;', th for Christ and for the Christian seekinG salvation, is constantly stressed by Donnee Consequently, his rhetoric is intuitive, rhapsodic, and rooted in worldly concernso As well, his notion of reason is pragmatic and rather non-intellectual, de-emphasizing doctrine in favour of passion and emotional commitment o Contents

Introduction p. 1 ):1 I " ... and the light of that eye is reason. p.5

II " Paracletus, qui est Spiritus veritas. It p. 50

III " ... a kinde of halfe-horror and amazement," p.77

IV n ••• to search into unprofitable curiosities, n p. 105

ill I would like to thank Professor Graham Roebuck of the English Department, McMaster University, for his concern, guidance and assorted valuable suggestions. Rev and Chris deserve a thank you for being, between them, a spur to diligence. I would also like to thank Irene Gibson for her patience and help in preparing the typescript.

Not for the usual reasons, but stfll, for reasons kno w n to the author, this volu m e is dedicated to Julia.

iv Up to and including the earlier part of the seventeenth century, the sermon delivered in church was undoubtedly, for the average person, the most wide-spread and influential, formally-organized means of communi cation. Local, national and international news, political views, the changing winds of doctrine, all were integral to the sermon in the English

Renaissance. Further, there was an element of drama, or entertainment

(in the sense of a lively engagement of the congregation in the sermon) that could make some preachers, such as John Donne and Lancelot

Andrewes, quite famous in their own time. Donne, for example, drew overflow cro~?s every Sunday to the old St. Paul's Cathedral. There are thousands of extant sermons dating from the Elizabethan and Jacobean reigns, ranging from volumes of illegal Catholic sermons printed on the

Continent and smuggled into England by men such as Edmund Campion, through Anglican and Puritan sermons, all the way to the prophetic, apocalyptic and occasionally incoherent pronouncements of the extreme

Protestant sects. A rigorous and somewhat arbitrary principle of selec tion has led to the inclusion in this volume of three Anglican preachers;

Richard Hooker J Lancelot Andrewes, and John Donne. The reasons for selecting thIs particular cast of pulpit 0rators will emerge in the thesis

proper e For now, though, a small amount of aWed background inform a tion on congregations, Bibles and texts would, I trust, prove useful.

The three men under consideration preached to quite varied congregations, and this factor should be." kept in mind when reading their 2

works. Hooker practised his art primarily before a group of London

lawyers in the Temple. As membership in the Temple was restricted to

those learning and practising the legal trade, Hooker was guaranteed a

consistent audience. This audience was trained to a very high degree in

the precise use of complex language and sentence structures, and also to a

high degree in reasoning skills. Andrewes was, for many years, the court

preacher to James I and Charles I. He too, in a sense, was guaranteed a

consistent audience, inasmuch as he preached each time to courtiers,

learned divines, and assorted scholars. Such a congregation would have

been very well educated in Classical and Patristic literature, foreign

languages, both ancient and modern, and literary expression, both creative

and scholarly. Thus they appreciated, more than any other congregation

could have, Andrewes' depth of thought, breadth of learning, elegance,

and innovative, 'witty' style. Donne, on the other hand, as Dean of St.

Paul's, preached to a mixed and diverse audience from the City and

Westminster, everything from Billingsgate fish-mongers to soldier-poets

and from merchants to courtiers. In a very real sense, the City crowd

came to be entertained as well as enlightened, inasmuch as they de

manded sharpness of wit, and appreciated the dramatic qualities of a

sermon? such as voice, pacing, phrasing and 'energeia'. The achievement

. 'of thess: three Anglican preachers can, in part, be traced to their abilities

,tr:.I ~.;;IU~ .'y theh- demanding a.nd somewhat 'specialized' congregations.

} hf: EHblical- sources cmd references need some clarification. There

,were ;'1;: i:y versions of the Bibie available to Renaissance Englishmen,

esp\:'\:: lJ~' i·-; h('~/ .f()s~;e;_;$ed fluency in one or more foreign languages. In 3 their use of the various versions, we can see elements of each man's doctrinal prejudices. Hooker used, almost exclusively, the Bishop's Bible of 1578, the first 'official' Anglican Bible. Where this volume fell short, he would occasionally supply his own more precise translation. He did not use the more famous (and more interesting) Geneva Bible of :!SEW, primarily, we may assume, because he did not wish to give any credence to the faith of its Calvinist translators. In his sermon-duel with the puritan Walter Travers, in the 1580's, Hooker especially would not have wanted to mention this politically-charged translation. Andrewes, on the other hand, being more concerned with his congregation's spiritual state of being than with precision of argument or doctrine, seized upon the

Geneva Bible as his major source of Biblical quotation and inspiration.

Primarily, this was due to a similarity of style between Andrewes' writings and the Geneva translations. As well, though, Andrewes admired the brevity and intensity of expression. He occasionally used many other versions, some in one of the original seven Biblical languages. Where the

Geneva, or any other, Bible fell short of his standards, he too would substitute his own translations, often from memory, so that accuracy was sacrificed to 'spirit'. Donne used the 1611 Authorized Version of the

Bible, and thus, indirectly, was influenced by Andrewes (see below,

Andrewes chapter). Donne used this version not only because he lacked,

in large measure, the others' profound scholarship, but also because, as a

poet) he admired the Authorized Version's strong, masculine and inventive

language. Donne was not a bad scholar, though, as he often used the Latin Vulgate Bible as a corollary to the Authorized text. Thus, each man seized upon the Bible most suited to his own needs and tastes.

Finally, a note on the sermon texts used. In Hooker's case, the sermons that he drafted in direct response to Walter Travers have been used here as illustrative examples. Unfortunately, the only available editions of Hooker's sermons are reprints of Keble's edition of the 1840's, in which spelling and punctuation have been modernized. For Andrewes, as there are ninety-six available extant sermons, a narrowly-defined scope has led to the inclusion of only a few Christmas and Whitsuntide sermons.

Donne's case is the most complex. There are one hundred and sixty surviving sermons of Donne's, and at least half deal in large part with the themes herein touched upon. As the sermons are available in a variety of editions, the use of a consistent text, and a specifically small group of sermons, has been ruled out. I

" .. and "the light of that eye is reason. " and this begot in the Pope an earnest desire that Doctor Stapleton should bring the saiJi four Books, and looking on the English read a part of them to him in Latin; which Doctor Stapleton did, to the end of the first Book; at the conclusion of which, the Pope spake to this purpose; There is no learning that this man hath not searcht into; nothing too hard for his understanding: this man indeed de serves the name of an Author; his books will get reverence by Age, for there is in them such seeds of Eternity, that if the rest be like this, they shall last till the last fire shall consu me all Learning.

attrihuted to Clement VIII, in Walton's Life of Hooker, p. 212 Richard Hooker was born early in 1554 at

Heavitree, near Exeter, in Devonshire, into a poor but well-connected family. In 1568, John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, secured a clerk IS place for Hooker at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At that time medieval scholasticism reigned supreme as the major dialectical mode at Oxford, and thus Hooker received a sound indoctrination into the matter and manner of Aristotlean and Thomistic philosophy. He became a Fellow of

Corpus Christi nine years later. During his tenure there, he was a much- beloved tutor, establishing several life-long friendships with students. In

1581 he married Joan Churchman of London.

At about the time of his marriage, Hooker was presented with the living of Drayton-Beauchamp, in Buckinghamshire, not far from Alesbury, in the Diocese of Lincoln. (1) Izaak Walton painted a gloomy picture of

Hooker~ stay in this rural parsonage, but it is known that Hooker did not want to leave it when he subsequently came to be noticed and aided by

the Anglican hierarchy. Shortly after he received this living, Hooker was appointed to the mastership of the Temple, in London. By this time he was enjoying the patronage of John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury.

1\.t the Temple, Hooker preached· Sunday Matins service to a congregation of London lawyers. The afternoon service was preached by Walter

Travers, an eminent Puritan divine: 8

and his being disappointed by Mr. Hookers admit tance (to the Mastership of the Temple), proved the occasion of a public opposition betwixt them, in their Sermons. Many of which were concerning the Doctrine, and Ceremonies of this Church: Inso much, that, as St. Paul withstood St. Peter °to his face, $0 did they withstand each other in their sermons; for, as one hath pleasantly exprest it, The Forenoone Sermon sake Canterbury, and the N ternoon, Geneva. 2

Three of Hooker's seven extant sermons definitely date from this period of strife. It was this controversy that led Hooker and his friends in the

Anglican hierarchy of London, such as Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop

Andrewes, to conceive of and begin to produce his masterwork, Of the

Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, a systematic and thorough defence of the

Elizabethan settlement of church and state. The same concerns that prompted Hooker to write the Laws can be found in his early sermons. As well, Hooker's early work demonstrates his unique style, so that it would appear that he had been meditating upon his great theme for a con- siderable period of time.

In order to facilitate the plan for the writing of the Laws,

Archbishop Whitgift arranged for Hooker's transfer to the country rectory of Boscombe, Surrey. Here he wrote the first four of a projected eight books. In 1595 he moved to Bishopbourne parsonage, near Canterbury, where, in 1597, he completed Book V of the Laws. He assayed only rough drafts of the last three books before his death in 1600. Only six sermon texts survived amongst his papers, and one further sermon was found amongst the papers of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes. The whereabouts or fate? of the hundreds of sermon-texts that Hooker undoubtedly drafted, is not kno\vn. Of the surviving texts, it is readily appaient that the 9 emphasis in his sermons is very close to his philosophical position in Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. It would be useful to examine the style and content of the Laws before turning to the sermons, not only in order to more firmly grasp Hooker's thought, but also because Hooker gave clearest expression to the principles and beliefs of pre-Laudian

Anglicanism, so that understanding Hooker will enable one to better understand Andrewes and Donne, the other preachers under examination herein.

The Laws, the Sermons, and Reason

Richard Hooker's Work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, addressed itself to examining the foundations of theology, reducing "the

Anglican-Puritan controversy to first causes." (3) The major divisive issue in Elizabeth's time was the question of authority in religious and church affairs, and thus, by inference, due to the nature of the Elizabethan

Settlement, in state affairs. The seeds of discontent that led ultimately to the English Civil War were first sown from the pulpit, indeed, were being sown in Hooker's time by many disaffected clergymen. Conse quently, Hooker attempted to examine the foundations of authority itself, in order to justify the (at that time) shaky Elizabethan Settlement. As

"law is the concreteness of authority," (4) Hooker enquired into the nature and validity of law. The basis for his study of law was the Thomistic theory of natural law. 10

Naturallaw theory posits that there is an ideal law or code, which can be known through reason, against which the actions and laws of humanity may be measured and judged. In order to attain normative significance, an ideal law must be rooted in, and draw its meaning from, something greater and more permanent than human social necessity or political expediency. Thus natural law theory underlies Hooker's appeal to reason and tradition (custom and consent) in the regulation "and unfolding of human polity, whether civil or ecclesiastical. In his sermons, natural law theory justifies Hooker's use of reason and explains his focus upon God as generative reason, or Logos (see below).

The Christian formulation of natural law arose out of certain biblical texts. (5) Early Christian exegetes developed three essential concepts from these texts. ,First, nature, (all the physical universe) is

God's knowing ,creation. Second, nature unfolds according to the decree of God's Will (Providence). Third, God established boundaries and a fun- dam ental division of things into kinds of being, each of which obeys some aspect of God's Will. Nature, then, in this scheme becomes a dependent adjunct of God. Hooker gave expression to the distinction between the creative God and derivative nature in Book I of the Laws. He stated that, in Creation:

in the working of that first cause, ... counsell is

used, reason followed y a way observed, that is to 'say~ constant order and law is kept, whereof it selfe must needs be author unto it selfe. Other ,vise: It should have some worthier and higher to direct it;· and so could not it selfe be the first. Being the first, it can have no other then it selfe to be the author of that law which it willingly wor kethby,," God therefore is a law both to himselfe, and to all other things beside. (6) 11

God's laws are purposive, not arbitrary or accidental, because they are the perfect expression of Divine Reason:

God worketh nothing without cause. All those things which are done by him, have some ende for which they are done: and the ende for which they are done, is a reason of his will to do them ... That and nothing else is done by God, which is leave undone were not so good. (7)

This concept of the essential and necessary teleological goodness of God's

Creation had its roots in Aristotlean metaphysics. However, the Christian tradition altered the Aristotlean concept by adding to it the concepts of

Grace and charitas.

All theories of natural law depend upon the reasoning mind's ability to distinguish between qualities and attributes in nature which have

normative significance, and those which do not. In Aristotlean metaphysics, God is the final, or teleological cause, inspiring the constituent particulars of nature to strive to realize their form. Aquinas, drawing upon patristic precedents, established the concept of nature as a teleological system in a Christian context. He linked 'virtue' and 'goodness' to the essences of natural kinds, beings and things.

Hooker adopted this concept, and assigned it to a central place in his argument:

It cannot be, but nature hath some director of infinite knowledge to guide her in all her wayes. Who the guide of nature but only the God of nature? In him wee live, move and are. (Act 17:28). Those things which nature is said to do, are by divine arte performed, using nature as an in strument: nor is there any such arte or knowledge divine in nature her selie working, but in the guide of natures worke. (8) 12

Hooker went on to define the 'form' of humanity as the soul, in distinction to the outward and visible manifestations of the soul:

Forme in other creatures is a thing proportionable unto the soule in living creatures. Sensible it is not, nor otherwise discernable, then only by ef fects. According to the diversitie of inward formes, things of the world are distinguished into their kindes. (9)

This distinction between forms of things and the souls of humanity is

important to Hooker's notions of reason and of the path to salvation, as

shall be seen below. For the moment, however, it is sufficient to note

that Hooker divided natural law itself into two spheres of apprehension:

Wherefore to come to the law of nature, albeit thereby we sometimes meane that manner of wor king which God hath set for each created thing to keepe: yet for as much as those things are tearmed most properly naturall agents, which keepe the law of . their kind unwittingly, as the heavens and elements of the world, which can do no otherwise than they doe, and for as much as we give unto intellectual natures the name of voluntary agents, that so we may distinguish them from the other: expedient it will be, that we sever the law of nature observed by the one from that which the other is tied unto. (10) (emphasis mine)

Natural law as applied to "voluntary" agents was Hooker's chief concern.

Thus, the striving of particular beings towards the perfection of essential

form is not merely necessary? but· is also a moral duty of "voluntary"

agents. This was Hooker's major pastoral concern in the sermons - to

awaken the sense of duty in the souls of hIs parish.i.onerso

Hooker viewed natural law as the perfect and knowable expression

of God's Will in the world, The souLls. the knowinp, :vehicle of God's Will in ." _. "- -.-~-- -- 13 underlies nature, are the unwitting vehicles of God's Will in the world. In order to prove that natural law rests upon teleological principles, Aquinas, and, in his turn, Hooker, presupposed that the use of reason by "voluntary agents" would reveal the first, general principles of nature to ail, equally, and that through these first principles, God's Will can be, in part, understood by the rational faculties of humanity. This is a major part of

Hooker's theme in the sermon "00 the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect, II wherein Hooker addressed himself to the problem of the

'believer' who doubts God's Law and thus, seemingly, cannot be assured of

God's Grace. Before this aspect of Hooker's argument can be fully understood, it is necessary to look at his notion of human freedom.

Hooker allied himself with Aquinas' concept of freedom. Aquinas believed that human freedom consists in arbitrium, the act of knowing.

He did not make reference so much to free will as he did to freedom of choice. Thus the will, according to Hooker, necessarily attaches itself to that which, through the use of reason, is judged good or desirable in a moral context:

The good which either is gotten by doing or which consisteth in the very doing itselfe, causeth not action, unlesse apprehending it as good we so like and desire it: that we doe unto any such ende, the same we choose and preferre before the leaving of it undone. Choice there is not unlesse the thing which we take to be so in our power that we might have refused and left it. If fire consumeth stubble,

it chooseth not so to doe9 because the nature therof is such that it can do no other, To choose is to will one thing before another. And to will is to bend over soules to the having or doing of that which they see to be good. Goodnesse is seene with the eye of the under-.?tandi~ And the light of tha t eye is reason. (IT}1emphasis mine) 14

The notion of free will, then, is a fable. Those who claim that free will is possible, according to Hooker, are confusing will and appetite:

The object of appetite is whatsoever sensible is that good which reason doth lead us to seeke ... neyther is any other desire termed properly will, but that where reason and understandin or the show of reason rescribeth the thin desired. 12 emphasis mine

Reason, then, is the faculty that chooses the good, or guides the will to a greater good.

Thus, it is in the use of reason that the concept of freedom finds expression in the Thomistic tradition and in Hooker's fields of thought.

Further, reason, or reasoned argument, became the major means of expression for Hooker, both in his theological discourses and in his sermons. However, this concept of freedom is a rather limited one by

modern standards. Humanity, employing reason to temper will, is free

merely to choose between degrees of goodness in objects or actions:

For evill as evill cannot be desired: if that be desired which is evil, the cause is that (good) which is, or seemeth to be joyned with it ... In doing evill, we prefer a lesse good before a greater, the greatnes whereof is by reason investigable, and may be known. (13)

If evil is the absence of good, then evil exists only in the minds of

humanity and not as an active principle in nature. The active principles

of nature, through natural law, are necessarily and by definition purposive

and good. Thus, to sin is to come into conflict with the order of nature;

For there was never sin committed, wherein a lesse good was not preferred before a greater, and that wilfully; which cannot be done without the singular 15

disgrace of nature, and the utter disturbance of that divine order. (14)

Ultimately, this supposition is not susceptible of formal proof (the

"Certainty of Evidence"), and thus, freedom of choice becomes, in the final analysis, the reasoned decision whether or not to submit to a purposive teleology (the "Certainly of Adherence"). There is a major moral danger here, as Hooker clearly realized. "If reason erre, we fall into evill, and are so far foorth deprived of the general perfection we seeke". (15)

Hooker divided his notion of reason at this point into a crest-jewel of many facets:

The rule of voluntary agents on earth is the sen tence that reason giveth concerning the goodness of those things which they are to do ... The main principles of reason are in themselves apparent, For to make nothing evident of it selfe unto mans understanding were to. take away al possibility of knowing anything. Anriherein that of Theophrastus is true, They that seeke a reason of all thin s do utter ly overthrow reason. 16

The seeming paradox of the Theophrastian aphorism resolves itself when one realizes that Hooker discriminated between several levels of rational understanding. At the highest level of human understanding, reason alone is not enough to comprehend natural law. Revelation and reason must work together in the knowing mind, by studying the two visible manifestations of Providence in the world, Nature (studied primarily through reason) and Scripture (studied· primarily, afbeit.with great reservations on

Hooker's part, through revelation). 16

Hooker's (and Andrewes') epistemology, political and legal doctrines all

rest upon this relationship. The way in which Hooker employed reason and revelation in his arguments (and sermons) also serves to establish Anglican doctrine on this matter as distinct from Roman Catholic and Puritan doctrines. ('Doctrine' is a codified belief, or theological law. 'Discipline' is the method of discernment and interpretation of that law). Hooker

pointed out that:

There are but two waieswhereby the spirit leadeth men into all truth: the one extraordinarie, the other common; the one belonging but unto some few, the other extending it selfe unto all that are of God; the one that which we call by a special divine excellency Revelation, the other Reason. (17)

In anticipation of Puritan arguments, Hooker here began to set boundaries around the concept of revelation and the primacy of the Scriptures. He

pointed out that the individual whose divine illumination is not corro-

borated by the general reason of "all that are of God" commits "error

-more earnest a great deale, then (for the most part) sound believers in the

maintenance of truth apprehended according to the nature of that

evidence which scripture yeeldeth." (18) Hooker's concern here was with

the radical Protestant position that Scriptural exegesis, based upon and

aided by divine illumination, ought to be the supreme tool of religious

discipline. Hooker's point here was that no prophet can succeed without

the reasoned consent of his followers.

The notion that God's Will could be known through intuitive

revelation was derived in the Renaissance primarily from Augustine. The

belief that there could be a direct, intuitive contact between the 17 individual spirit and the Holy Spirit was being used in Hooker's time as a means for circumventing natural law theories and establishing the supremacy of scriptural exegesis over authority in religious discipline.

Consequently, this notion threatened the political structure of the An- glican Church. (Thus, perhaps in reaction to this, Hooker downplayed the importance of the Holy Spirit, as compared to Donne and especially

Andrewes, in favour of God the Father, the God of Logos and generative reason). The reliance on individual interpretation of God's Word led to schism, revolution and innumerable self-proclaimed 'tongues of God,' especially, in Hooker's time, among the Anabaptists of the German states.

Hooker commented on these sects and their notions of revelation and 'illumination' in, of course, a reasonable fashion:

If the Spirite by such revelation have discovered unto them the secrets of that discipline out of Scripture, they must professe themselves to be all (every men, women and children) Prophets.(l9)

.Further, and more to the point:

After that the phancie of the common sort hath once thoroughlie apprehended the Spirit to be au thor of their perswasion concerning discipline, then is instilled into their hearts, that the same Spirit leading men into this opinion, doth thereby seale them to be Gods children, and that ... the most speciall token to know them that are Gods owne from others, is an earnest affection that waie. This hath bred high tearmes of separation between such and the rest of the world? whereby the one sort are named The brethren, The god lie, and so forth, the other worldlings, timeservers, pleasers of men not of God, with such like. (20)

According to Hooker, the danger of revelatory religious discipline is that

the intuitive faculty, by itself, cannot truly discriminate God's Word. 18

Errors in interpretation from personal 'illumination' are inevitable, and humanity then propogates false doctrine, leading to schism. That which begins as a notion of meek, Apostolic Christianity in individuated discipline, if it denies authority, will decline, in Hooker's view, into fanaticism.

Further, as a prophet of reason, Hooker found the extreme

Protestant notion of the Elect most repugnant. He expressed a universal pastoral concern in his sermons:

That which cometh last of all in this first branch to be considered concerning the weakness of the Pro phet's faith, "Whether he did by this very thought, The law doth fail, quench the Spirit, fall from fai th, and shew himself an unbeliever, or no 7" The question is of moment; the repose and tranquillity of infinite souls doth depend upon it. The Prophets' case is the- case of many; which way soever we cast for him, the same way it passeth for all others. If in him this cogitation did extinguish grace, why the like thoughts in us should not take the like effects, there is no cause. (21)

Not only did Hooker deny the exclusion of any part of humanity from the potential healing grace of God, but he further insisted upon a reasonable solution to the question at hand:

Forasmuch as the matter is weighty, dear and precious, which we have in hand, it behoveth us with so much the greater chariness to wade through it, taking special heed both what we build, and whereon we build, that if our building be pearl, our foundation be not stubble; if the doctrine we teach be full of comfort and consolation, the ground whereupon we gather it be sure; otherwise we shall not save but deceive both ourselves and others. (22)

The image of the solid foundation occurs throughout Hooker's works. For

Hooker, the strongest foundation of Christian thought was the concept of 19 charitas (see below). The notion of the Elect excludes the Christian doctrine of charitas, and thus Hooker concluded that revelation alone cannot suffice as a moral guide for "all that are of God."

Hooker came at the concept of reason from many directions in his works. His disinclination to specify or define the concept arose out of two monumental difficulties that he faced. The first was how to counteract the doctrine of fideism as advanced by the Puritans. His second difficulty, as with Andrewes and Donne, lay in differentiating between the doctr ines of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of

England, both of which believed at that time in natural law and the supremacy of authority. Hooker assumed the paradoxical position of defending and also attacking Thomism and of clearing a middle ground between the 'extremes' of faith and reason. Thus, in order to distinguish the Anglican position from the Puritan fideists and Roman Catholic pyrrhonists, Hooker placed a primary emphasis on reason in his discussion of the sources of religious authority, without being specific about what he actually meant by reason.

In discussing fideism, Hooker pointed out that:

It is not therefore the fervent earnestnes of their perswasion, but the soundnes of those reasons whereupon the same is built, which must declare their opinions in these things to have bene wrought by the holie Ghost, and not by the fraud (2 Thess 2:11) of that evil! Spirit which is even in his illusions strong. (23) 20

Hooker felt that the Puritan argument against authority in religious

discipline was paramorphic. Despite their professed fideism, Puritans still

relied on a notion of reasonableness and the consent of the Elect in

determining doctrine. Like the prophet Hababbuk, the Puritans explicitly

denied the notion of reasonable consensus, but implicitly assumed it in

their doctrine. Yet the truth contained in Hooker's response to both the

doubting prophet and the Puritans cut deeper than a notion of reasonable

consensus. For Hooker, "truth is not a human invention, unique and

unrepeatable; it is a subjectively gained insight that has an objective

foundation in reality itself." (24) Consequently, the truth, when assimi-

lated by reason and properly comprehended, cannot fail to convince. This

is what Hooker called the "Certainly of Adherence," a concept that

requires a clearer definition of reason in order to be intelligible.

As reason is the key to an understanding of natural law, and of

Providence, Hooker regarded reason as the highest human faculty.

Reason, however, is not a unified faculty. Hooker divided reason into

supernatural reason and human reason. Supernatural reason is reason

,/ aided by God's Grace. Thed- is, revelation and reason work together at

intuitive levels of apprehension in order to discern the meaning of the two

books of God, the book of Nature and the book of Scriptures. Hooker

seems to be seriously qualifying the Augustinian concept of 'illumination,'

and thus his thoughts on this subject are very different from Donne's, who

preferred a rhapsodic~ intuitive method of interpretation. Human reason,

or the rational, conscious process of cognition, is an imperfect faculty of

postlapsarian man (see below) that necessarily operates in partial blind- 21 ness and isolation, and as such is susceptible to fancies and errors (such as the logical trap of the doubting believers in the Habakkuk sermons). It is especially difficult for the human mind to distinguish between the two levels of reason within itself. Hooker called the level of intuitive ra tionali ty the level of "Certainly of Adherence," and the level of conscious rationality the level of "Certainty of Evidence." (25)

Hooker distrusted the "Certainty of Evidence," because he believed that reason, too, suffered after the fall from Eden. Thus, postlapsarian reasoning abilities (supernatural as well as human) are necessarily in- complete:

The search of know ledg is a thing painful and the painfulnes of knowledge is that which maketh the will so hardly inclinable thereunto. The root hereof divine malediction whereby the instruments being weakned wherewithall the soule (especially in reasoning) doth worke, it preferreth rest in igno rance before wearisome labour to knowe.(26)

Hooker argued that earthly corruption and gross perception weigh down the already weakened soul, making the application of right reason extremely difficult. Thus, in his sermons, Hooker's pastoral concern was with "doubters":

To that of Abraham, "He did not doubt"; (Rom. IV:20) I answer, that this negation doth not exclude all fear, all doubting, but only that which cannot stand with true faith. It freeth Abraham from doubting through Infidelity, not from doubting through Infirmity; from the doubting of Unbe lievers, not of weak believers. (27) . 22

The temptation to seek an 'easier' path to the truth is an unfortunate characteristic of postlapsarian humanity. Hooker argued, however, that this flawed faculty of reason is a necessary aspect of Providence:

The reason which is taken from the power of the Spirit were effectual, if God did work like a natural agent, as the fire doth enflame, and the sun enlighten, according to the uttermost ability which they have to bring forth their effects. But the incomprehensible wisdom of God doth limit the effects of his power to such a measure as seemeth best unto himself. Wherefore he worketh that certainty in all, which sufficeth abundantly to their salvation in the life to come; but in none so great as attaineth in this life unto perfection. Even so, o Lord, it hath pleased thee; even so it is best and fittest for us, that feeling still our own infirmities, we may no longer breathe than pray, "Adjuve, Domine;" "Help, Lord, our incredulity." (Mark IX:24) (28) (emphasis mine)

In the Laws, Hooker stated this position a little more precisely:

The nature of man, being much more delighted to be led than drawn, doth many times stubbornly resist authority, when to persuasion it easily yiel deth. Whereupon the wisest lawmakers have en deavoured always, that those laws might seem most reasonable, which they would have most in violably kept. A law simply commanding or for bidding is but dead in comparison of that which expresseth the reason wherefore it doth the one or the other. And, surely, even in the laws of God, although that he hath givel'lcommandment be in itself a reason sufficient to exact all obedience at the hands of men, yet a forcible inducement it is to obey with greater alacrity and cheerfulness of mind, when we see plainly that nothing is imposed more than we must needs yield unto, except we will be unreasonable. In a word, whatsoever we be taught, be it precept for direction of our manners, or article for instruction of our faith, or document any way for information of our minds, it then taketh root and abideth, when we conceive not only what God doth speak, but why. (30) 23

What Hooker meant by right reason needs further clarification. The key to understanding his notion of reason is, as with all Christian writers, belief. Here, it is faith and submission to God's Grace acting in harmony with reason, reason both aided by and yet distinct from God's Grace. Thus

Hooker sought a synthesis of reason and revelation in the knowing mind of the true believer.

In his sermons, Hooker adopted an orthodox Anglican position. On the one hand, then, he agreed with all Protestant thinkers in that the

Scriptures, as the revealed Word of God, became a major guide to salvation for postlapsarian humanity. On the other hand, scripture is not enough of a guide:

Seeing that no more is by us mainteyned, then onely that scripture must needes teach the Church whatsoever is in such sort necessarie, as hath beene set downe, and that it is no mere disgrace for scripture to have left a number of other things free to be ordered at the discretion of the Church, then for nature to have left it unto the wit of man to devise his own attyre, and not to looke for it as the beasts of the field have theirs. (31)

Neither scripture nor nature serves as a discipline, in and of itself, for moral salvation. The intervention of reason is required for the correct interpretation of either of the Books of God. Right reason, employed as a balancing process, can control postlapsarian imagination and prevent excesses in 'divine illumination.' This balancing process is an integral part of Hooker's style, as shall be demonstrated below. One further point needs to be brought forward here. If Hooker was correct in his assumption that human reason is essentially flawed; then it follows that 24 individual, intuitive interpretation of the Scriptures cannot lead the solitary mind to an understanding of Providence.

According to Hooker, the reasoning process itself is poorly understood by most people. He pointed out that, under the umbrella term

'reason', there are in fact three levels of cognitive apprehension .. Failure to discriminate between these three levels is the cause of much sin, or

'error':

Wherefore the naturall measure whereby to judge our doings, is the sentence of reason, determining and setting downe what is good to be done. Which sentence is either mandatory, shewing what must be doone; or els permissive, declaring onely what may bee done; or thirdly admonitorie, opening what is the most convenient for us to doe. (32)

The blurring of the imperative, assertive and expedient is the cause of most errors of reasoning. Sin arises out of the incorrect use of an imperfect reasoning ability, for evil, it will be recalled, is known in degree, not in kind. Those who claim primacy in discipline through a special divine illumination, according to Hooker are, in relying solely upon their own reason and will, inevitably drawn into sin. Faith and reason must balance each other in the individual mind, and the individual must further seek a balance between personal religious experience and the community of spiritual endeavour. Although it does not have a direct bearing on the sermons of Hooker, Donne and Andrewes, it would be worthwhile to examine the Anglican notions of custom and consent to authority, as Hooker expressed them. This would aid in comprehending better the Anglican insistence on reason as a tool of religious discipline. 25

The Discipline of Reason Applied to Polity

Thomistic natural law theory defines humanity as a rational, social animal, one which naturally chooses to form a politic society. Aquinas added the term ---social to Aristotle's definition of humanity as political: To be a social and political animal living in a crowd is even more natural to man than to the other animals. His inherited needs declare this depen dence .•• He is endowed with his reason by which he can contrive these (Hfe-support) aids. Yet to see all of them is beyond anyone man's power; alone he cannot dispatch the business of living. Con sequently that he should dwell in association with many is according to his nature .•. Furthermore, other animals have an inborn ingenuity with regard to what is beneficial or harmful ... But man's inbred knowledge about these matters is limited to general principles; he has to take pains to work from them to the provision of his needs in each and every case. One solitary man cannot discover everything for himself. (33)

If humanity naturally seeks to form civil society, then, as "voluntary

agents" of God's Will, humanity must naturally desire a form of ecclesias-

tical polity. What follows on the physical plane must also follow on the

spiritual plane, according to Hooker. To hold that humanity is a

communal animal within nature but a solitary one in spirit is in defiance

of reason. Thus humanity naturally tends to the formation of spiritual

polity, and further, because reason is flawed, necessarily submits to the

authority of custom and consent. It is at this point that Hooker's concept

of law and authority breaks with the Thomistic tradition and assumes the

middle ground between Puritan and Catholic.

The Roman Catholic notion of authority (custom and consent)

derives primarily, though not completely, from the submission of reason 26 to faith in the 'mystery' of the Trinity, Incarnation and Ceremony of the

Eucharist. Hooker wanted to see this submission to authority rest primarily, though not completely, on the foundation of reason, reason aided by yet distinct from God's Grace. At the same time, Hooker did not wish to lessen the importance of religious faith:

The simplicity of faith which is in Christ taketh the naked promise of God, his varie word, and on that it resteth ... The word of the promise of God unto his people is "I will not leave thee nor forsake thee": upon this the simplicity of faith resteth, and it is not afraid of famine. (34)

It is merely his position that in the question of religious authority, reason must prevail:

For men to be tyed and led by authority, as it were with a kind of captivity of judgement, and though there be reason to the contrary not to listen unto it, but to follow like beasts the first in the heard, they know not nor care not whether, this were brutish. Againe that authority of men should prevaile with men either against or above reason, is no part of our beliefe. (35)

Thus reason ought to dictate for the individual in questions of politic restraint.

The lawfulness of nature, when rightly apprehended by reason in conjunction with God's Grace, leads to the positive, purposive restraint of polity. There can be no morality or justice (that is, the principle of rectitude) without religious authority. There can be no law or justice,

(that is, the maintenance and administration of that which is in accor- dance with the accepted boundaries of action) without civil authority. 27

The one maintains the apprehension of the eternal dictates of Providence, the other administers the expedient unfolding of Providence in time (the mutable and unstable). Thus, in order to obey natural law as completely as possible, Hooker's synthesis of reason and revelation necessarily leads to the intertwining of church and state. Ideally the community of spiritual human endeavour would be identical with the community of natural human endeavour.

Due to the essential flaw in human reason, Hooker did not view any form of human polity - civil or ecclesiastical - as perfect, immutable, or in any sense absolute:

God was not ignorant that the Priests and Judges, whose sentence in matters of controversie he or deined should stand, both might and often times would be deceived in their judgement. Howbeit, better it was in the eye of his understanding, that sometimes an erronous sentence definitive should prevaile, till the same authoritie perceiving such oversight, might afterwardes correct or reverse it, then that strifes should have respit to growe, and not come speedily unto some ende. (36)

According to Hooker, then, custom and consent make up for the deficien- cies of reason. The weight of reason and judgement through the generations must be more important than individual knowledge,(Thus the appeals to historical and patristic precedents that permeate the sermons of Andrewes and Donne). It is essential to Hooker's system of thought that each generation take responsibility for questioning anew the first principles of faith, for in this manner right reason shall be the correct religious discipline, and not a coercive or corrupt authority: 28

But when they who withdraw their obedience pre tend that the laws which they should obey are corrupt and vitious; for better examination of their qualitie, it behoveth the very foundation and root, the highest welspring and fountaine of them to be discovered. (37)

An ecclesiastical polity should offer a time-tested and time-honoured religious discipline that will help the individual to overcome personal spiritual weaknesses. Any religious authority that disbars automatically, as a matter of doctrine, the rest of humanity who are not of the 'elect' has ignored the chief moral lesson to be found in the Gospels of Christ - charitas. Thus Hooker used scripture to destroy the primacy of scripture in the Puritan faith.

On ,the other hand, Hooker rejected Roman Catholic religious authority because it came to be founded on a faith in 'mystery', not on reason.

Reason indicates that, as contexts change, so too should, if reasonable consensus so judges, the nature of the polity change:

In other words, the kind of church government that Hooker defends is open to change. Within such a church, truth is available and can be recorded with an impressive measure of accuracy, yet it is never possessed in such a way that the process of search could be prematurely ended and the partial insights of one age permanently absolutized. The failure to take such a stand is the weakness of both the Puritans and Rome. As Hooker notes: "Two things there are which trouble greatly these later times; one, that the Church of Rome cannot, another, that Geneva will not erre." (38)

To err is human. Natural and positive law, working together, represent the unfolding of Providence in this changing world. As these laws are understood primarily through the flawed faculty of reason, human reason 29 is doomed to inevitable, occasional error in its interpretation of God's

Will. However, as the sermons of Andrewes and Donne rightly demonstrate, this rigorous yet flexible methodology can lead to an exciting sense of exploration and discovery, as each individual seeks to reconcile himself to God's Word and world. It is inflexibility and fanaticism that

Hooker abhorred, and not intelligence and creativity.

In summary then, Creation unfolds according to the dictates of

Providence. Natural existence proceeds from the divine, creative stabilty of an eternally Present God, the God of generative reason. Therefore, argued Hooker, "see we not obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?" (39) Knowledge of nature and natural law leads to true knowledge of humanity. An understanding of the fundamental order that underlies existence expedites an understanding of human moral issues:

The knowledge of that which man is in reference unto himselfe, and other things in relation unto man, I may justly terme the mother of al those principles which are as it were edicts, statutes and decrees in that law of nature, whereby humaine actions are framed. (40)

As Creation is necessarily good, and the constituent particulars of nature naturally strive towards goodness, so too in the microcosm of the polity, common sense, experience and custom seek out and find goodness.

Andrewes, more often than not, sought a patristic precedent where

Hooker applied reason to indicate the path to salvation for humanity: 30

Naturall inducement hath brought men to knowe, that it is their duty no lesse to love others then themselves. For seeing those things which are equall, must needs all have one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive all good, even as much at every man's hands as any can wish unto his owne soule: how should I looke to have any part of my desire herein satisfyed, unless my selfe be carefull to satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men, we all being of one, and the same nature. (ttl)

Thus, Hooker posited the spiritual equality of all, and his notion of moral action is known and upheld through reason. (It is interesting to note this position, for Hooker firmly believed, after Aristotle, in the necessity of a hierarchy in the spiritual and in the civil polity, even though all souls stand equal in nature and before God. The necessity for order in human affairs prompted this seeming paradox.) The other guide to goodness comes from the revealed word of God as set down in scriptures. In time, law becomes the ordered expression of the expedient unfolding of Provi- dence. Tradition and reason become the means of framing and gauging - the quality of law. Yet reason, for Hooker, does not lead to inflexibility, nor does revelation lead to fanaticism, for the system he envisaged allows for change, but only when change becomes necessary. Hooker paraded on the knife-edge of reason between two notions of faith and authority that sought to destroy the Elizabethan Settlement. Yet inherent in all his thought is a profound faith in the teachings of Christ.

The Discipline of Reason in Hooker's Sermons

Izaac Walton, that most incompleat biographer of Richard 31

Hooker (42) happily touched upon the essence of Hooker's sermonic style in the following extract:

his use was to preach once every Sunday, and he, or his Curate to Catechise after the second Lesson in the Evening Prayer; his sermons were neither long nor earnest, but uttered with a grave zeal, and an humble voice; his eyes always fixt on one place to prevent his imagination from wand ring insomuch, that he seem's to study as he spake; the design of his Sermons (as indeed of all his Discourses) was to shew Reasons for what he spake; and with these Reasons, such a kind of Rhetorick, as did rather convince and perswade, than frighten men into piety; studying not so much for matter (which he never wanted) as for apt illustrations to inform and teach his unlearned Hearers by familiar Examples, and then make them better by convincing Appli cations, never labouring by hard words, and then by needless distinctions and sub-distinctions, to amuse his Hearers, and get glory to himself; but glory only to God. Which intention, he would often say, was as discern able in a Preacher, as a Natural from an Artificial beauty. (43)

The "Natural beauty" of Hooker's synthesis of reason and revelation in his sermonic style is of fundamental importance to an understanding of

Hooker's matter.

The Laws and the sermons function as a defence of reason and natural law. One can attribute a great deal of the appeal of Hooker's argument to his manner of presentation. Matter and manner are inextricably interwoven in prose of any worth, but Hooker's stylistic brilliance lies not so much in his generally Ciceronian periods as in his synthesis of style and content. Throughout the Laws and the sermons, definition, word usage and sentence structure arise from Hooker's con- 32 viction that the meaning of language is rooted in the nature of the things that language represents, and not primarily in the internal syntactic relationships:

But for as much as wordes are resemblances of that which the minde of the speaker conceiveth, and conceiptes are images representing that which is spoken of, it followeth that they who will judge of wordes should have recorse to the thinges them selves from whence they rise. (44)

Hooker shared this belief with Andrewes. When speaking specifically of sermons, Hooker added:

Speech is the verie image whereby the minde and soule of the speaker conveieth it selfe into the bosome of him which heareth. (45)

Thus, "emphasis is always given to inventio, ... dispositio and elocutio are always subordinated to the content." (46) In this sense, Hooker was far less of an artist than Andrewes or Donne, but far more of a philosopher and theologian:

For touchinge our sermons, that which giveth them their verie beinge is the witt of man, and therefore they oftentimes accordinglie tast too much of that over corrupt fountaine from which they come. In our speech of most holie thinges, our most fraile affections manie times are bewrayed.(47)

This explains Hooker's unyielding determination to reasonably present the path to salvation, which path, in Hooker's view, is in large part made smoother by reason.

Hooker was a conscious craftsman, carefully constructing every phrase, clause and period, but he was always 'making' thought and creating ideas and not just explaining or framing in a reference. With reason as a 33 guide, he explored the fundamental issues of the Reformation. Reason became the major tool, as well as weapon, for Hooker because, it will be recalled, he was balanced on the knife-edge between two doctrines advocating the primacy of faith, on the one hand, the fideism of the

Puritans and on the other, the growing pyrrhonism of the Roman Catholic controversialists. Hooker's emphasis on reason is very much in evidence in his rigorous and thorough methodology, especially in scriptural exegesis:

And if any complaine of obscuritie, th~y must consider, that in these matters it commeth no otherwise to passe then in sundry the work both of art and also of nature, where that which hath greatest force in the very things we see, is not withstanding it selfe oftentimes not seene. The stateliness of houses, the goodllnesse of trees, when we behold them delighteth the eye; but that foundation which beareth up the one, that root which ministreth unto the other nourishment and life, is in the bosom of the earth concealed: and if there be at any time occasion to search into it, such a labour is then more necessary then pleasant both to them which undertake it, and for the lookers on. (48)

Further, to repeat a passage quoted earlier:

But when they who withdraw their obedience pre tend that the laws which they should obey are corrupt and vitious; for better examination of their qualltie; it behooveth the very foundation and root, the highest welspring and fountaine of them to be discovered. (49)

To discover the truth about the nature of God and Creation was the

central issue of the Reformation. From this essential first principle, all

matters of moral law and polity flow. Thus anything less than a thorough,

comprehensive and rational treatment of his subject would offend against 34 the very moral order that Hooker advocated. Paradiastolary treatises and inflammatory, polemical prose would only lessen the force of his argument, and rio-one was more aware of t~is than Hooker himself. He did not seek to subvert the truth, or lessen its impact:

For many talk of the truth, which never sounded the depth from whence it springeth, and therefore when they are led thereunto they are soon wearie, as men drawne from those beaten paths wherewith they have been inured. (50)

In short, the nature of the truth that Hooker sought to reveal, that God the Father is the God of Logos, or generative reason, and the author of

natural law, dictated his style.

Hooker's weighted, meaningful prose reveals a divine pattern through

style and a divine purpose through content. "God him selfe is the teacher of the truth" (51) through the two divine Books, nature and scripture. The two paths, which ultimately are one, to salvation are reason and revela-

tion. In order to emphasize their harmonious relationship within the mind,

Hooker employed a parallel structure when discussing how the mind comes

to know sacred truths (IS he I is wisdom):

Some things she openeth by the sacred bookes of Scrypture; somethings by the glorious works of nature: with some things she inspireth them from above by spirituall influence, in some thinges she leadeth and trayneth them onely by worldly ex perience and practise. (52)

This sort of deliberate parallelism is an exception to the usual structural

design of Hooker's periods. Its design is conscious, making it stand out

from the Ciceronian period because it is the central statement of 35

Hooker's position or religious discipline, and its structure supports his position.

Nonetheless, the relatively long, Ciceronian period becomes

Hooker's chief device for ordering and presenting two thousand years of tradition in the Laws. But his style does not change substantially in his sermons:

It is commonplace to speak of the sonorous periods of Hooker, more especially when referring to his work, 'Of the Lawes of Eccesiastical Polity.' A specimen of his style, from the famous sermon 'of the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect' ... goes to prove that the characteristics of what he delivered in the pulpit were identical with those of his written work in his study. (53)

Yet Hooker is 'Ciceronian' only insofar as, on the surface, the structure of his works reflects the 'Ciceronian' style of the sixteenth-century Christian humanists:

Nowhere in Hooker is there slavish imitation ... He is ... Ciceronian in the best sense of the word, but not because of deliberate imitation of a classical original. These epithets are not to be applied to him as the epithet '5enecan' is applicable to Bacon or Bishop Hall... The fact that in reading his work we are reminded of the Classical Orators and of the Fathers proves that there is some quality which he has in common with them, a quality at once more subtle and more admirable than meticulous attention to petty rules and ingenious verbal ex periment could achieve. (54)

Hooker's Ciceronian style, then, is chiefly his vehicle for sorting out the complicated ideas that he dealt with: 36

Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade farre into the doings of the most High, whome although to knowe be life, and joy to make mention of his name: yet our soundest know ledge is to know that we know him not as in deed he is, neither can know him: and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confesse without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatnes above our capacity and reach. (55)

Hooker used the way the argument unfolded in the period as part of the argument. He employed a complex hypotactic structure in order to assemble a logically-ordered series of relatively short subordinate clauses, leading to the main clause near the end of the period. This main clause acts as the pillar of the period, supporting the load, but also focussing the meaning suddenly, sometimes in unexpected ways:

Albeit therefore much of that we are to speake in this present cause, may seeme to a number perhaps tedious, perhaps obscure, darke, and intricate, (for many talk of the truth, which never sounded the depth from whence it springeth, and therefore when they are led thereunto they are soon wearie, as men drawn from those beaten pathes wherewith they have been inured) yet this may not so farre prevaile as to cut off that which the matter itselfe requireth, howsoever the nice humour of some be therewith pleased or no. They unto ui10m we shall seeme tedious are in no wise injuried by us, be cause it is in their owne hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to indure. (56)

Thus:

Cause and effect, condition and concession, defini tion and distinction - all find their explicit func tions within the structure of his grammatical units. For Hooker the complex sentence is the reflection of rational process. (57)

Within the sermons, the periods are broken up into somewhat shorter 37 units, no doubt for the relief of the auditor, but the method of logical progression and 'unfolding' of argument still holds sway. Hooker's long, contemplative and often very complex periods reflect an unhurried, conservative and meditative pattern of thought. The notion of pattern is very important in Hooker's works.

Through the revelation of patterns, Hooker intended to guide the mind of the auditor in his sermons and reader in the Laws, to transcendence, to knowledge not just of the world but also of the spirit, to gnosis as well as logos. Yet his use of logos and his clear rational focus upon nature and the world of man, stemmed from his allegiance to the

Aristotlean traditions of Scholasticism. Hooker had studied his Augustine as well, though, and logos became a tool of transformation in the Laws and in the sermons, irQm logos to Divine Logos, from law of humanity to natural law to lex aeternae, the law of Creation. A reader accustomed to later devotional modes may have great difficulty with Hooker's movement from reason, using a reason as the transforming agent, to a position beyond reason. Coleridge understood this process when he noted, concerning the 'Certainty of Adherence' passage in the "Certainty and Per- petuity of Faith" sermon:

How is it possible that a sick man should have the same certainty of his convalescence as of his sickness: Yet he may be assured of it. So again, my Faith in the skill and integrity of my physician may be complete, but the application of it to my own case may be troubled by the sense of my own 38

imperfect obedience to his prescriptions. The sort of our beliefs and assurances is necessarily modi fied by their different Subjects. It argues no want of saving faith on the whole, that I cannot have the same trust in myself as I have in my God. That Christ~ righteousness can save - these are simple positions, all the terms of which are steady and co present to my mind. But that I shall be saved, - that of the many called I have been one of the chosen, - this is no mere conclusion of mind on known or assured Premises. I can remember no other discourse that sinks into, and draws up com fort from the depths of our Being below our own distinct consciousness, with the clearness and godly loving-kindness of this truly evangelical, God-to be-thanked-for Sermon.(58)

Despite the Kantian overlay, Coleridge here has grasped the meaning of

Hooker~ sense of reason on the highest level, the level where the 'divine' illumination operates rationally. The synthesis of faith and reason leads to suprarational transcendence.

Thus, with Hooker, the thought process (the style) is almost as important as the product (the content), because in this case the product

\,Vas fabricated through the application of right reason. The structural ordering principles reflect, both logically and stylistically, "the recurrent patterns of Hooker's own cognitive process." (59) The development of the sense of a rational thought-process through an extended Ciceronian period introduces an element of suspense. In the longer sentences, the suspense becomes quite dramatic. (60) The sudden resolution of the subsequent tension acts upon the reader in a 'revelatory' manner. This creates another inner tension through the development of a reason-revelation process. Another device used to equal effect by Hooker was to follow an 39 extended period with a restatement of its essence in a short, pithy, axiomatic sentence. In the following quite famous passage, we see a master ly use of this method of argument:

Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own lawes: if those principall and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should loose the qualities which now they have, if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve it selfe: if celestiall spheres should forget their wonted motions and by irregular volubilitie, turne themselves any way as it might happen: if the prince of the lightes of heaven which now as a Giant doth runne his unweried course, should as it were through a languishing faintnes begin to stand and to rest himselfe: if the Moone should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the yeare blend themselves by disor dered and confused mixture, the winds breath out their last gaspe, the cloudes yield no rayne, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruites of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them reliefe, what would become of man himselfe, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto ilie lawe of nature is the stay of the whole world? (61) (emphasis mine)

Through the use of hypothetical statements, Hooker here outlined his belief that the great Chain of Being placed everything and all living creatures in their correct place in the hierarchy of Nature. Further, this hierarchy is ordered along rational, divinely inspired lines. The restatement forcefully Irevealsl the theme of the period, especially for those who may have missed it the first time around. In a sermon, Hooker could not use such grand periods, but he could employ the same techniques: 40

The light would never be so acceptable, were it not for that usual intercourse of darkness. Too much honey doth turn to gall; and too much joy even spiritually would make us wantons. Happier a great deal is that man's case, whose soul, by inward desolation is humbled, than he whose heart is through abundance of spiritual delight lifted up and exalted above measure. Better it is sometimes to go down into the pit with him, who, beholding darkness, and bewailing the loss of inward joy and consolation, crieth from the bottom of the lowest hell "My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?" (Psalm xxii,i) than continually to walk arm in arm with angels, to sit as it were in Abrahams bosom, and to have no thought, no cogitation, but "I thank my God it is not with me as it is with other men." (Luke xviii, ii) No, God will have them that shall walk in light to feel now and then what it is to sit in the shadow of death. A rieved spirit therefore is no argument of a faithless mind. 62 emphasis mine}

Hooker here argued for the necessity of experience (the book of Nature) in order to fulfil Providence. He used words to lead the auditor beyond words to the level of intuitive assent. Further, the copious and poetic images in the above two passages also serve to aid the auditor/reader in experiencing the essential order of Nature. The reader who too eagerly anticipates the direction of Hooker's thought will have great difficulty. In his periodic structures, Hooker imposed the discipline of reason on the auditor or reader. Further, his style has an inner harmony and 'inward' focus, inasmuch as the reader or auditor is led to the contemplation of the centre of all things, to God. The key to understanding the process is, as with all Christian writers, belief.

The importance of belief in Hooker's works comes out most strongly in his use of scripture. It is important always to remember, when reading 41

Hooker, that he seeks to synthesize reason and revelation. As the

scriptures are the revealed Word of God, Hooker made constant reference

to Holy texts in his work. Further, Hooker, like Andrewes, was an expert

at scriptural exegesis. As the primacy of scripture over authority was, at

that time, a major area of dispute between Puritans and Anglicans, it is

.significant that Hooker proved himself a master with his enemy's chief

weapon.

In his sermons, Hooker sought a medicine to heal fallen reason. A

major problem that he faced, both as an Angli2"an of the Elizabethan

religious disputes, and a Thomistic scholar, was the Puritan use, in

preaching, of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians II and III. (King James

version) This controversial book contains verses such as II:16 and 19:

16: Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, een we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no faith be justified. 19: For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto god.

Needless to say, such a text, for Puritans who believed in the supremacy

of scripture over authority, was a mighty weapon in the battle to destroy

the Elizabethan Settlement.

Hooker~ response was to preach a series of sermons on the book of

Habakkuk to his congregation of lawyers in the Temple. Only two of

these sermons have survived. In the most important one, "Of the

Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect," Hooker took as his text

Habakkuk I :4, "Therefore the law is slacked, and judgement doth never go 42 forth," and subtitled the sermon as follows: "Whether the Prophet

Habakkuk, by admitting this cogitation into his mind, IThe law doth fail, I

did thereby shew himself an unbeliever:1 (II, 289) The law referred to is

the rule of lex aeternae in the world and in the hearts of believing

humanity. In as precisely reasoned and judiciously worded a manner as possible, Hooker demonstrated that doubt and misgiving did not put a

troubled soul beyond the pale of redemption (see Coleridgels analysis

above). Ultimately, charitas, Godls Grace to the fallen, will gain sway

over Providence. Thus Hooker argued that fallen reason will inevitably

lead humanity into error and sin, also that this too is a part of Providence,

and thus ought not to lead the mind into despair (or into schism). Thus,

for the fideists to attack the rule of natural law was, in Hookerls view, a spurious and misrepresentative act.

Hookerls balanced, rational style in exegesis acts as a direct and

telling refutation of the fideist position, for scripture is of little value to

humanity without interpretation, and interpretation is of little value if it

is not rational and orderly. His rational approach, however, ought not to

be confused with the scientist~ method or the logician IS rules. Hooker

possessed:

that spirit and tendency of thought which every where ascends from traditions or dogmas to prin ciples, and which tests all questions, not with reference to external rules or authorities, but to the indestructible and enlightened instincts of the Chr istian consciousness. (63)

Hookerls instincts, as they are made manifest in the Laws and the

sermons, warned him to avoid the zeal and partisan enthusiasm of self- 43 proclaimed prophets and preachers, for inevitably such people establish an emotional primacy in their worship and an exclusivity in their notion of justification:

The prophet Habakkuk knew that the promises of grace, protection, and favour, which God in the law doth make unto his people, do not grant them any such immunity as can free and exempt them from all chastisements: he knew that as God said, "I will continue my mercy for ever towards them;" so he likewise said, "Their transgressions I will punish with a rod." (Psalm LXXXIX, 2&, 32) he knew that it cannot stand with any reason, we should set the measure of our own punishments, and prescribe unto God how great or how long our sufferings shall be: he knew that we were blind, and altogether ignorant what is best for us; that we sue for many things very unwisely against ourselves, thinking we ask fish when indeed we crave a serpent. (64) (emphasis mine)

Hooker's philosophical, rational approach reinforced his argument.

As well, he proved himself a master of the Gospels, for the concept of charitas underlay all his works:

There will come a time when three words uttered with charitie and meekenes shall receive a farre more blessed rewarde than three thousand volumes written with disdainefull sharpnes of wit. (65)

Thus, those whose fideistic doctrines depend entirely upon the primacy of scripture, according to Hooker have consciously excluded the most important words of all, the Gospels of Christ. As well, Hooker's exposure of the other basic flaw in fideism - that there is no check on imagination, caprice or emotional interference - is brought about as much by method of presentation as content. His gentle, reasonable and almost friendly sermonic style is disarming and channing, yet charged by its very nature 44 with the informing principle of charitas, the central principle of Christia- nity.

Hooker would have distrusted any analysis based on style, for he was almost totally concerned with fundamental, objectively verifiable truths.

However, due to this emphasis, Hookerls style is rooted in the objective nature he studied. The conclusion that he drew from the Bible, the patristic writers, and Aquinas was that God is Love, and so the preacher whose work is not charged with love of God and of all of spiritual humanity, equally, is committing a basic error. This is an error of reason, for it is primarily through reason that we come to know the true nature of

God.

Hookerls stylistic excellence resides primarily in the internal balance and harmony of his periods and overall structures. His great theme is of balance and equity and his style mirrors this belief. Hooker was a decorous writer, without being gaudy, meretricious or consciously

Iwittyl. IIThroughout Hookerls work is the realization of the Ciceronian ideal, dicere ornate et copiose ... Beneath the fulness and ornamentation of statement there is the informing passionll (66) of faith. This faith simplified what could have become wordy, Ischolarlsl prose:

A chance Pentam Iambic from Hooker, p. 82. It is rare to meet an idiom of this sort in Hooker - thol his diction is native English throughout - the lan guage of a thoughtful, learned Englishman indeed, but still English, if not our Mother, yet our genuine Father tongue. II (67)

There are not nearly so many Latinisms and scholarly asides in Hooker as there are in Donne or Andrewes, because Hookerls sense of tradition and 45 continuity was embedded in the very style, diction and form of his choosing, and not in 'stick on' references and allusions:

It has been said many times that the greatness of Hooker is not to be sought in daring novelty or in boldness of thought but in his admirably clear comprehension of the great classical and Christian tradition, in the skill with which he avoided ex treme solutions and followed that VIA MEDIA which has become the ideal and symbol of Angli canism and has so greatly contributed to shape the particular bent of the English mind.(68)

Hooker's reasonableness, carefully and judiciously crafted arguments, and the important underlying concept of charitas all serve constantly to strengthen his argument. Hooker himself was fully aware of the fact that style can bolster and serve content, as this excerpt from the Laws shows:

I have endevoured throughout the bodie of this whole discourse, that every former part might give strength unto all that followe and every later bring some light unto all before. (69)

In this way Hooker brought to the fore his emphasis on reason, on custom and consent that had been proven through the ages in the rigorous testing- ground of right reason applied in differing contexts. Thus, his language

"does not call attention to itself," but rather, "Hooker's use of words ... expresses the nature of things." (70) His language seeks to affirm the eternality of God's Creation, inasmuch as Hooker sought a sense of permanence and peace in the flux of dispute and controversy. His quest was for the immutable and timeless elements of humanity's moral knowledge. Hooker found these in the nature of God's Creation, in the highest faculty of reason, and in the traditions that emanate from a knowledge of God's Will and a bellef in God's Grace. 46

Notes

1. Izaak Walton, "Life of Richard Hooker" in Lives (Oxford, 1973), p. 179.

2. Walton, Lives, p. 200.

3. S. Steuber, "The Balanced Diction of Hooker1s Polity, II PMLA, LXXI (1956), p. 811.

4. D. DeLara, IIRichard Hooker1s Concept of Law, II Anglical Theological Quarterly, XLIV (1962), p. 385.

5. For example, Job 28:26; Job 26: 1 0; Job 38: 1 0, 11; Psalm 19:5, Proverbs 8: 9,23; Jeremiah 5:22; and most of Genesis I.

6. Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, I, (Cambridge, 1977), p. 60.

7. Hooker, Laws I, p. 60.

8. Hooker, Laws I, p. 67.

9. Hooker, Laws I, p. 67.

10. Hooker, Laws I, p. 64.

II. Hooker, Laws I, p. 78.

.12. Hooker, Laws I, p. 78 .

13. Hooker, Laws I, p. 80-8l.

14. Hooker, Laws I, p. 80.

15. Hooker, Laws I, p. 82.

16. Hooker, Laws I, p. 85.

17. Hooker, Laws I, p. 17.

18. Hooker, Laws I, p. 17.

19. Hooker, Laws I, p. 17. 47

20. Hooker, Laws I, p. 18.

21. Richard Hooker, Works, ed. by John Keble (New York, 1851), Vol. II, p. 291.

22. Hooker, Works II, p. 291.

23. Hooker, Laws I, p. 18.

24. Egil Grislis, "The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker," Studies in Richard Hooker, (Cleveland, 1972), p. 177.

25. Hooker, Works II, p. 289-290.

26. Hooker, Laws I, p. 81.

27. Hooker, Works II, p. 290.

28. Hooker, Works II, p. 290-291.

29. Hooker, Laws I, p. 81.

30. Hooker, "Sermon on the Nature of Pride,." Works II, p. 353.

31. Hooker, Laws I, p. 213.

32. Hooker, Laws I, p. 89.

33. Thomas Aquinas, Philosophical Texts, (London, 1951), p. 358.

34. Hooker, Works II, p. 292.

35. Hooker, Laws I, p. 181.

36. Hooker, Laws I, p. 31.

37. Hooker, Laws I, p. 57.

38. Grislis, "Hermeneutical Problem," p. 170.

39. Hooker, Laws I, p. 66.

40. Hooker, Laws I, p. 88.

41. Hooker, Laws I, p. 88.

42. See the books by David Novarr and C. Sisson, on the writing of Hooker's works and Walton's accounts thereof.

43. Walton, Lives, p. 218. 48

44. Hooker, Laws II, p. 69.

45. Hooker, Laws II, p. 98.

46. Steuber, "Balanced Diction," p. 819.

47. Hooker, Laws II, p. 99.

48. Hooker, Laws I, p. 57.

49. Hooker, Laws I, p. 57.

50. Hooker, Laws I, p. 65.

51. Hooker, Laws I, p. 117.

52. Hooker, Laws I, p. 147-148.

53. W.F. Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson, (London, 1932), p. 64.

54. Mitchell, Oratory, p. 66.

55. Hooker, Laws I, p. 59.

56. Hooker, Laws I, pp. 56-57.

57. Georges Edelen, "Hooker's Sty Ie," Studies in Richard Hooker, p. 244.

58. S. T. Coleridge, Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, (Durham, 1955), p. 140.

59. Edelen, "Hooker's Sty Ie," p. 243.

60. See Edelen pp. 252-255 for an analysis of this process in the longer periods.

61. Hooker, Laws I, p. 65-66.

62. Hooker, Works II, p. 291-292.

63. John Tulloch, Rational Theolo y and Christian Philoso hy in England in the Seventeenth Century New.York, 1972 , p. 53.

64. Hooker, Works II, p. 293.

65. Hooker, Laws I, p. 12.

66. A. Pollard, Richard Hooker, (London, 1966), p. 32. 49

67. Coleridge, Seventeenth Century, p. 141.

68. A.P. D1Entreves, The Medieval Contribution to Modern Thought (New York, 1959), p. 89.

69. Hooker, Laws I, p. 57.

70. Steuber, IIBalanced Diction, II p. 824. II

"Paracletus, qui est Spiritus veritatis" The Parson's Method in handling of a text cons:ist.s of two parts; f:irst, a plain and evident declaration of the meaning of the texti This he thinks naturall, and sweet, and grave. Whereas the other way of crumbling a text into small parts, as, the Person speaking, or spoken to, the subject, and object, and the like, hath neither in it sweetnesse, nor gravity nor variety, since the words apart are not Scripture, but a dictionary, and may be con sidered alike in all the Scripture.

George Herbert, Works, 234-5 Lancelot Andrewes, Dean of Westminster (1601), Bishop of Chichester

(1605), of Ely (1609), and of-Winchester (1618), (1) was one of the great pulpit orators of the seventeenth-century in England. He was also a dedicated professional cleric who spent all of his mature years serving his

God, and his Church in various capacities. T.S. Eliot claimed that "the achievement of Hooker and Andrewes was to make the Church of England more worthy of assent." (2) As well, "the intellectual achievement and the prose style of Hooker and Andrewes came to complete the structure of the English Church as the philosophy of the thirteenth-century crowns the Catholic Church." (3) To clarify and expand Mr. Eliot's comment, it should be noted that, thanks to Hooker, Donne, Andrewes, and others, the

Thomistic traditions are also jewels in the Anglican crown of achievement. Andrewes applied much of the mortar to cement the foundations of early Anglican thought' through the "force, clarity and weight of his appeal to Scripture,~ antiquity and reason." (4)

Thus, the major sources of religious authority in the sermons of

Andrewes (as in the sermons of most Anglican preachers of this era,

Donne and Hooker included) are the Bible, Christian traditions, and the notion of reason. Andrewes drew upon Scriptures and tradition for the greatest proportion of his imagery. The notion of reason that he advocated is reason as method, and is thus implicit in his style, informing

his US~ of imagery. In Andrewes' case, the way he employed his imagery,

(i.eO? his language and style) is as important as the imagery itself: 53

The writings of both Hooker and Andrewes illus trate that determination to stick to essentials, that awareness of the needs of the time, the desire for clarity and precision on matters of importance, and their indifference to matters indifferent which was the general policy of Elizabeth. (5)

Although 'clarity' was not always of uppermost concern to Andrewes,

'precision' certainly was. It is important to remember that the Anglican divines of the Elizabethan age were consciously striving to build up a

Church and a theology from the very foundations of religioLis knowledge, on the middle ground (if such ground existed) between Rome and Geneva.

Thus, for Hooker and Andrewes, language structure and internal stylistic harmony were important as outward and visible manifestations of the

Anglican via media.

The Bible, as the revealed. WQr:dof GOG; _-was .tbe- single greatest source of ideas and imagery for Andrewes. He knew intimately all of the various versions of the Bible that he had read, and he had command of virtually all of the Biblical languages~

His admirable know ledge in the le9.rned tongues, Latine, Greeke, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriack, besides other Moderne Tongues to the number of fifteene (as I am informed) was sucl1and so rare, that he may well be ranked in the first place as one of the rarest linguists in Christendom. (6)

The claim has been made that Andrewes ,couJ,d have _served as liinter preter-generaJ at the confusion ~f tongues,". (7): )iis contr·ibution to the

Authorized Version of the Bible was significant .. He sLlpervised the work of the Westminster Group, who translated the p~ssages from Genesis I to

Second Kings (Andrewes especially leaving his mark on the Pentateuch), and the Epistles of the New Testament, Thus, ir:levitablY9 Andrewes was 54 a master of scriptural exegesis.

In his own sermons, Andrewes drew most heavily on the Nonconformists'

Geneva Bible of 1560. Probably Andrewes preferred its terse, powerful prose as a complement to his own sermonic style. He employed biblical imagery with "sensitivity, resourcefulness and precision." (8) Andrewes preferred the four-fold method of biblical interpretation (the historical, moral, typological, and most importantly, the linguistic focus upon the

'word' of the text) (9). The major focus in Andrewes' biblical references was on "the joyful and glorious mysteries of Christianity," (10) (emphasis mine), that is to say, on the process of redemption and salvation. Thus,

Andrewes preferred the philosophy of the Gospels of Christ to that of the

Old Testament, "though, like Donne he turned most frequently to the

Psalms and the Gospel of St. John." (11) Andrewes often would juxtapose texts from the Old and the New: Testaments in order to accent the inevitability of the Incarnation and to emphasize the continuity and traditions underlying Christian thought; The notion of tradition is very important in Anglican theology and in the sermons of Andrewes.

Further, Andrewes, like Hooker-, emphas'ized the concept of charitas.

In explicating the text of Luke II, xii-xiii, he commented:

The Song: That .consists· of three streines, There . are in it 1. God, 2. Earth, and 3. Men, these three first. And then, three to these 1. GIOrie, 2. Peace, 3. Good-will: Each sorted to other: 1. Glorie, to God; 2. Peace, to the Earth; 3. To Men, a Good Will. (12) 55

From the song of the "whole Queer of Heaven," we learn our duty, "to find Christ.,,(13)

Andrewes found expression of the concept of charitas in many scriptural sources, but he saw it most clearly in the process of redemption

that obtains in the Passion of Christ as symbolized in the Crucifixion,

Resurrection and Ascension, and he saw it in the Holy Spirit proceeding

from the Father and the Son, as symbolized by Pentecostal fire. (14)

Andrewes placed great emphasis on the fact that the Incarnation,

Resurrection, Ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit through the

descent of Pentecostal fire were all living experiences for the first

Christians. Often, he seems to have been as intrigued by the presence of

onlookers at the events in Christ's life as by the events themselves.

Andrewes' most important contribution to Anglican thought lay in

his stress upon tradition, in his sense of "antiquity and authori ty." (15)

Throughout his sermons, there is evidence of Andrewes' belief in the

importance of Christian heritage. In "Sermon 10 of the Holy Ghost: Whit-

Sunday, 1617," he stated:

I shall not need tell you, the Spirit comes not upon us now, at our conception in the wombe, to annoint us there, No: we behoove to light our lam pes oft, and to spend much oyle at our studies, yet we can

atteine it. This way come we to our. annointing1 now, by bookes: This Booke chiefly; but, in a good part also, by the bookes of the Aunclent Fathers, and Lights of the Church, in whom the sent of this ointment was fresh, and the temper true; on whose writings it lieth thick, and we thence strike it off and gather it safely. (16) I' I

This passage is significant, for it was this notion of the ancient human

authority (however divinely inspired) of Christian traditions, as a parallel

authority to that of the Word of God, that distinguished Andrewes from

"the Puritan principle of regarding the Scriptures as the sole and exclusive

source of Christian teaching." (17)

The Anglican emphasis on the continuity and traditions of Christian

thought, especially of the early Church, (given its clearest expression in

Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity), inasmuch as this repre-

sented the religious appeal to antiquity and authority, was the main

weapon for them in the long, agonized battle with the English Puritans. It

was, indeed, a 'weapon' that Andrewes exploited with consummate skill

and grace in his better sermons.

Thus, Andrewes consciously drew on the rich and varied traditions of

Christian religious history:

And this rule, and the steps of the Fathers pro ceeding by this rule, are to me a warrant, to expound and apply this verse (as they have done before) to the present occasion at this time: (18)

The verse in question is from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Andrewes,

in considering the state of salvation of Biblical figures from the Old

Testament, here drew on the Fathers as his guide. Andrewes' usual

sermonic practise, though, was to use a quotation .from patristic sources

for ornamentation or emphasis:

Leo It is that first said it? (And all antiquities allow of it), Non soHuit Unionem, se9 subtraxit visionem. (19) 57

Occasionally Andrewes would appeal to the authority of a Basil or a

Bernard to justify doctrinal points, yet the following was far more typical

of Andrewes' use of traditional sources:

Let me tell you this: Saint Augustine is very earnest upon this point, of the keeping of righ teousnesse and peace... Aske any, would you have Peace? With all my heart, he will answere. There is not having one without the other; Osculantor hae, amant hae; why they kisse, they love toglther. Si amicam pacis non amaveris, non amablt te ax, if ye love not her friend that is, Righteousnesse, she will none of your love. Take that from Saint Augustine. (20) --

Augustine represents by far Andrewes' major non-biblical source, but he

also drew upon other patristic writings, the first four councils (Nicaea,

Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon) (21), the scholastic traditions,

and historians of the Church. Outside of these essentially religious

sources, there is a surprising lack of sources for imagery when Andrewes

is compared to Hooker or, more especially, Donne. Further, Andrewes

referred "very seldom to contemporary or recent writers except when in

controversy he takes issue with them." (22) Andrewes often did not quote

faithfully or exactly. Rather, he translated to convey the sense of the

..earlier work. This is probably so because, from the little that can be

learned of his study habits, he was quoting from memory when writing a

serrnon.

As well as appeals to traditional religious authority, Andrewes also

-:. -laid. elairn to the authority of reason, but "it was always as to a

confirmatory and supplementary source and not to a final arbiter." (23) 58

This last point is made by M.F. Reidy. While I have no basic disagreement with his position, it is necessary to qualify the meaning of the word 'reason' when applied to Andrewes as an Anglican theologian of the Elizabethan Renaissance and earlier seventeenth-century.

For Andrewes, there was no radical dichotomy or apparent contradiction between reason and relevation as there was in Puritan

doctrine and in the philosophy of Bacon. Andrewes' notion of reason, as did Hooker's, divided itself into two major levels of discernment. The first was the essentially Thomistic notion of reason aided by God's Grace acting in conjunction with faith in submission to God's Will. This notion of reason can be seen operating in Andrewes' discussion of the "Sign" in

"Sermon Twelve of the Nativitie~ Chr:istmasy 1618." Andrewes believed that "it is not the letter which is the Word of God, but the meaning of a passage." (24) In this notion of reason, especially as applied in sermons to

Biblical exegesis, the Anglican position was no different from Roman

Catholic thought, as established by Aquinas, up to the time of the

Counter-Reforma tion.

The peculiarly Anglican discipline of reason that Andrewes (and

Hooker and Donne) shared becomes apparent in the way that consent to

beliefj authority and custom is acknowledged. For the Roman Catholics of the time, the traditional authority of the Church established Itself primarily through faith; faith that submitted to mystery, as expressed in the Church primarily in the Office of the Ceremony of the Eucharist. For the Puritans, religious authority again devolved from faith; faith in the 59

'inner illumination' of the Holy Ghost, making manifest God's Will to the

Elect in a largely intuitive process. For the Anglicans, consent to submit

to the authority of the Church was derived primarily from individual

understanding of the need for government and regulation in church

affairs. Thus, for the Anglicans of Andrewes' pre-Laudian age, the

individual gave conscious and reasoned approval to doctrine, as well as a

faithful submission to Church teachings, with the implicit understanding

that ceremony and doctrine, inasmuch as these are the products of

postlapsarian man, were flexible and susceptible to change as contexts

changed. Yet the focus of early Anglicanism was clearly upon authority

and tradition, so that change would have had to be reasonable. Andrewes,

then, in considering the presentation of doctrine to the congregation, told

us plainly IIwha.t our dutie is~ To find Christ," (25) on a quest as personal

as that of the three wise men.

Consequently, Andrewes was primarily concerned, in his sermons,

with his congregations's spatio·-temporal struggle for salvation. Thus,

God's Grace, as expressed in the Holy Spirit, is his dominant concern and

image. The "Signe" of salvation for the individual is "to find Christ"

within~ a spiritual quest. "He meditated on the extraordinary generosity

of God in order to lead his hearers to admire holiness and to attempt it."

,(26) ,He was not 'a gr3.ndtheorist; as was Hooker, although he helped to

lay the foundations 'ofAngllcan thol\ght~; especially in that he helped to

systematize and regularize theory withIn the Anglican Church. Andrewes

was an unwilling -particip.ant'in"all of the wordly church affairs, inasmuch 60

as he preferred teaching, scholarship and preaching to politics and

administration. His chief concern and ultimate glory, as expressed in his

sermons, was his "pastoral concern with the little world of man." (27)

Through this, Andrewes gave clearest expression to the spirit of Anglican

doctrine in the Elizabethan age. This spirit, in its best manifestations,

has been summarized by F.E. Brightman as "the inheritance of all the

past, criticized by the best spirit of the Renaissance, adjusted to the

proportion of Holy Scripture, and adapted to the needs of the present." (28) Andrewes visualized humanity's greatest need as the need for

pastoral guidance, and many of his sermons seek to perform this function.

In conjunction with any consideration of Andrewe s'imagery and sources,

it is essential to consider his style. Style is the most important aspect of

his sermons, for the way he presented his theme is integral to his theme.

Keeping in mind the sources of imagery already outlined, let us turn now

to a study of Andrewe's sermonic style, to see how it connects with his

central Christian concerns.

Andrewes as a Metaphysical Preacher

Andrewes was undoubtedly the greatest practitioner of

'metaphysical' or 'witty' preaching. His sermonic style has been both

. praised and lamented as either a high point or a low point in the history of

the English sernion. His early sermons, dating from the 1580's, set the

tenor for a lifetime in the pulpit. "Lancelot Andrewes was pre-eminently

the preacher for great occasions (festivals and fasts in the life of the 61 church and the nation)," (29) but primarily, Andrewes preached "on the great days in the Life of Christ." (30) Well over half of his ninety-six extant sermons concern either the Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, or

Pentecost. Although he was never attached to a stylistic 'school', his early work was highly praised by Lyly and Nashe, two well-known and inventive stylists of the Anti-Ciceronian 'movement'. 'Witty' preaching, as established by Andrewes' brilliant example, was the most popular style of preaching in the earlier seventeenth-century, but as a style it suffered permanent eclipse thereafter (see the George Herbert quotation from "A

Priest to the Temple" at the beginning of this chapter for a contemporary criticism of 'witty' style). The great emphasis in 'metaphysical' style on intellectual and rhetorical skills and on reason made it most appealing to

Andrewes' contemporaries, the men of the declining Elizabethan Renais~ sance.

The terms 'metaphysical' and 'witty' "describe preachers who emphasized the paradoxical character of the Christian revelation, who used far-fetched analogies to create surprise and interest, and whose word-play was dazzling, while their erudition and culture were wide." (31)

Thus Donne and Andrewes are considered by many critics to be 'witty' preachers, whereas Hooker is not •. According to George Wi111amson~

the most striking trait of,. me.taphysical style9 v.fhkh

has an affinlty to the Seneca.n y Is the oppositioL (;( combination of ideas ;:;md images so a~: to exploit their ambiguous,. compatiDle~ (antJthetk:, pa"c;"

doxicaI) or contentious :aspects '0;0 ·:Hils is pteSfO:2r,I:

in Andrewes when he crumbles a text to pieces «0 Senecan brevity, abruptness .and point characterize the sentences of Andrewes. (32) 62

Douglas Bush comments that Andrewes' manner "reads like a parody of the Lipsian and Senecan 'hopping style' " and, for the most part, is (33) "condensed, jerky and difficult". Just as there are plays by

Shakespeare that are largely neglected because they are not of his usual quality, so too there are sermons by Andrewes that are "jerky". But to condemn them all on the basis of the worst of them is a critical reductio ad absurdiam. In a comment that serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy,

M.F. Reidy laments Andrewes' "failure, except rarely, to write in long, flowing periods of balance, subordination and contrast," (that is, his failure to be Hooked, which "results in a hectically jagged style. He is (34) totally addicted to the short sentence." It is true that Andrewes' periods are, for the most part, short, and that his style is fearfully condensed and difficult, but, as we shaH see below, the 'difficulty' of his style reflects his world-view. The paths to salvation were not designed for the ambulatory ease of the spirit, and Andrewes' style and language came to reflect this notion of 'difficulty'.

Aristotle, in the Rhetoric (III, x-xi), was the first to outline the chief characteristics of 'smartness of style," the hallmark of'witty' preaching:

Smart sayings depend upon antithesis, metaphor, ·and actualization (energeia); smartness requires brevity and even difficulty; it is nullified by ob viousness. Other elements of smartness are apo thegms; riddles, paradoxes, jokes, plays on words~ proverbs and hyperboles. 'As to style, popularity of form is due to antithetical statement'; and 'the more concisely and antithetically they are ex pressed, the greater is their popularity.' Moreover 9 ithe more special qualities the expression pos sesses, the smarter it appears; for instance, if the 63

words contain a metaphor, and a metaphor of a special kind, antithesis, and equality of clauses, and actuality'. (35) (emphasis mine)

Andrewes, like many other stylists of his age, adopted various elements of

Aristotle's 'smart' style to his own purposes. He was not one of those who consciously strove, in stylistic revolt, to displace the Ciceronian school, for he was far more concerned with the central Christian concerns of his content, and the means to amplify this concern through style, than he was with quibbles of manner. Thus the way he presented his material was designed totally to enhance the image, and not to draw attention to the manner of presentation.

Andrewes stated his position on style in the Fourth Lenten sermon:

"those that in fewest words comprise most matter, are most praised." (36)

Such an intense compression of ideas into as few words as possible, one would assume, would make for difficult listening in a sermon. Conse~ quently, Andrewes developed his 'witty' style so as to hold the attention of the congregation. A clear example of this 'wit' can be found in "Sermon

12 of the Nativitie; Christmas, 1618":

So have you the Signe and the Song: the one to ballance or counterprize the other; the Song, to sing away the Signe; to make amends, for the manger. The Signe, very poore and mean; the Song, exceeding high and heavenly. Paupertas in imis,the Signej povertie at the lowest: Gloria in excel~~, the Song, Glorie at the highest. That, well might Leo ask, Quis est iste puer, tam parvus tam magnus? What Child is this so little, and so great withall: Tam parvus, ut in praesepi jaceat: Tall! magnus, ut Ei concinant Angeli. So little, as he lyes in a cratch: So great though, as He hath 64

Angells to sing to Him: the whole Queer of / heaven, to make Him melodie. It is a course (this) the Holy Ghost began it (heer), at his Birth, and after, observed it all along, Sociare ima summis, et insolita soli tis temperare; to couple low and high together, and to temper things mean and usuall, with others as strange every way. \37f

This passage could serve as a defence of Andrewes' style. For our present

purposes, however, note how Andrewes developed the images of 'Sign' and

'Song' through paradox, antithesis and word-play. Yet the words remain

identified with their Christian meaning throughout the passage. Unlike

the modern notion of wit that had its birth in the Restoration era,

Andrewes' notion of wit had an objective basis in reality outside of the

internal syntactic structures. That is, his wit gave expression to a

profound. moral order. "Wit involved insights into the nature of things,

their relations -and consequences." P~) -This concept of wit came mainly

from Augustine. The De Doctrina Christiana:

became the final statement of St. Augustine's view of the relations of rhetoric to Christianity by expressing a profound adaptation of the language of rhetoric to his metaphysics and theology. The nature and uses of signs became strictly related to the realities to be sought (discovery) and to their formulation (statement) so that the use of the arts of language is utterly dependent on the structure of reality. (39) .

Donne shared this view of language with Andrewes~ and it is important to

an understanding.o.f botlT authory that this notion of langua.ge be assimi-

lated into a critical perspective,

Andrewes 'witt-y"style has~been linked to~

a European metaphysicaL 'movementin which the

tradition of humanist· eloquE;nce;' (that iS I for the 65

most part, Ciceronian style such as Hooker's) was replaced by the use of conceits, puns and startling antitheses to inculcate moral truths by the shock of surprise. (40)

In Andrewes' sermons, the 'shock of surprise' is the sudden revelation of

the reasonableness of the argument. His foremost purpose in his sermons

was to guide the auditor in the paths to salvation. His sty listie

pecularities, then, (many of them derived directly from the Fathers) were

designed deliberately to unbalance and disconcert a congregation so that

he could the more forcibly impress his arguments upon them. This

tendency can be found even in the very early sermons dating from the

1580's. These sermons possess "Senecan brevity and patristic play on

words ... in conjuction with euphuistic balance, antithesis and allitera

tion." (41) Andrewesalso employed a conversational and colloquial tone

to ease the dellveryof his weighty material:

If I were such an one, if I came with sad tidings, ye had reason, ye might feare. But now, your terrour, groweth out of err our . You are mistaken in me, I am no such Angel. (42)

. In these early sermons, there isa conscious attempt to render into English

the sermonic and .literary style of Church Fathers such as Basil, Gregory

of Nyssa and Augustine. The more mature sermons do not change in style,

but they do deepen and improve, as Andrewes learned through experience

which ones of each of the .. startling effects. in' his galaxy of rhetorical

devices would be~t catch the ear of an audience.

At this juncture, it would be useful to distinguish between Andrewes'

sermonic· style on the one hand and· the Senecan and Euphuist stylists on 66 the other. He shared in common with them "a command of the short, compressed sentence," "strong lines," "compact brevity and point," "fond ness for display on sounds," (43) deliberate parallelism in sound and structure (paramoion and parisonic structures), antithesis and inversion, as this extract from "Sermon 5 of the Nativitie: Christmas, 1610," shows:

Now the ende of both Sermon and Antheme, and of the Angels, in publishing it, and of the Shepheard~ and us, in hearing it, is gaudiam, Joy, for the Benefit, and Honour; gaudiam magnum, Great joy, for the great Benefit, and great Honour, vouch safed our nature, and us, this day. Joy, is in the Text, and if joy be in the Time, it is no harme; We keepe the Text, if we hold the Time with joy, For so the Angel doeth warrant us to hold it. (44)

However, whereas the Senecans and Euphuists of Renaissance England derived their styles from secular sources, especially the Silver Age of

Latin writers, Andrewes' style descended fromre'Ugious and patristic sources. Further, Andrewesdiffered from most of the conscious stylists of his age in content, and the way he married style to content, or expression to meaning, so that each supports the other in his finished work.

Arnilrewes1 style is; difficult to read, but he intended this. The chief concern in his greatest sermons ,vas the process of redemption through time:

The fact that Andrewes concentrates· on the slTlc.H> compact sentence rather' than· . the long, oCeanic one illuminates basic .difference·s. bet-w:?:e,', hirn a.nd

(for example) Donne". . Don':'e"sI_!... D;:j····iw __ , J.'-o#l. WF: ~.' .-'-i (~ i',"...... r i"'\1.. I. _1 ~·r.•. _ embrace the universe infinity. and e:;;f;rr:;~y, wh·ete.· as Andrewes is more concerned ·'v.dth 'tlIE ;,,/orid of human time and space. (4·5) 67

Andrewes selected a small circle of concern for each sermon topic, and then he stuck to the point. There is a surprising lack of digression or embroidery in his sermons. For example, in "Sermon 15 of the Nativitie:

Christmas, 1622," the topic is the three wise men of the East come "to find Christ," and the not so wise congregation. This is all that Andrewes discussed. The focus is constantly and intensively upon the topic. This is reflected in stylistic terms in the brief, elliptical and repetitive nature of his sentences. Again, Andrewes, as a preacher, was almost totally concerned with the path to salvation. He was "indifferent to things indifferent." Thus, he rendered an "acute, exact, learned and impersonal exegesis of his text, squeezing out the last drop of meaning from every (46) word." For example, in the "Nativitie Sermon number 12: Christmas,

1618," the word "Sign, or the plural thereof, occurs one-hundred and thirty-nine times; the Latin 'signum' or the obllque cases, appears forty- three times; various derivatives, Latin or English, number twenty-two."

If the auditor is not to throw his hands up in despair at this etymological assault, then Andrewes' style must knit together his nu- merous verbal conceits in a meaningful way.

Thus, Andrewes tempered the highly intellectual cast of his sermons with a conversational tone, short, terse expressions and various rhetorical devices. 'Intellectual' and 'impersonal' ought not to be construed as meaning passionlesso For despite, or rather as well as Andrewes' intellectual rigour, there is a spirited vigour in his writings and there abides in his sermons a deep-seated faith in the power and efficacy of 68

Christ and the Holy Spirit. Throughout, Andrewes' compressed, discip- lined and elegant periods reflect his beliefs. In "Sermon 15 of the

Nativitie," we find the following passage:

Their Vidimus begatt Venimus; their seeing made them come: come, a great journey. Venimus is soone sayd; but a short word; But, many a wide and weary stepp they made, before they could come to say Venimus, Lo here we are come, Come, and at our jorneys end. (48) --

Here Andrewes employed Latinate word-chimes to link "seeing" and

"coming"; to link the vision and the act. He studied the journey as a living experience for the three wise men, and not as a concept or an article of faith. Further, the repetition of "come" accents not only the physical journey of the three wise men, but also the spiritual journey "to find

Christ."

The sermon goes on to list the difficulties of the journey, but on another level the congregation is being directly addressed:

In this their Comming, we consider, 1. First, the distance of the Place, they came from. It was not hard by, as the she heard's (but a step to Beth lehem, over the fields: This was riding many a hundred miles, and cost them many a dayes jour ney. 2. Secondly, we consider the Way, that they came: If it be pleasant, or plaine and easy: For, if it be, it is so much the better. 1. This was nothing pleasant; for, through deserts; all the way wast and desolate. (49)

The congregation had an easy coming of it to the church, neither through deserts nor desolation. On the spiritual plane, however, for every auditor the path to Christ is like the journey of the wise men. The stark imagery, 69

terse language and passionate, elliptical expression only accentuates the

spiritual struggle:

2. Nor (secondly) easy neither; For, over the Rocks and craggs of both Arabies (especially Petraea) their journey lay. 3. Yet, if safe: But, it was not; but exceeding dangerous, as lying through the mid dest of the Black Tents of Kedar, a Nation of Theeves and Cut-throtes, ... 4. Last, we consider the time of their comming, the season of the years. It was no summer progresse. A cold comming they had of it, at this time of the yeare, to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in. The waies deep, the weather sharp, the daies short, the sunn farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of Winter. (50)

The language here is a masterful blend of Anglo-Saxon terseness, English

rhythms and Latin phrases to emphasize not only the continuity of

Christian thought, but the very real participation of the congregation in

the Nativity through the intercession of the Holy Spirito Andrewes

emphasized the eternal presentness of Christ by weaving together sixteen

hundred years of Christian belief, The judicious balancing of word and

clause, and the deliberate parallelism of sound and structure demonstrate

to the congregation the softness and ease of their pew-ensconced situa-

tion when compared· to the journey of the Magi. Further, the journey's

allegorical and symbolic qualities are drawn out by the intense brevity of

expression. "The wales. deep, the weather sharp, the dales short, the sunn

.. ' .farthest -Pf.i9 <<< ·the vel!y dead of Winter" can be seen as a description of

" . ;th2 n;:-;.'i:ure ()x !;Fle· sp.ir:itu3!· struggle that the congregation faces. The

.:.-cilcti€liT i§ plaln:~5-~.1(~21.t ;3.r1d'simple; so too? ultimately, is the meaning, if one

,,··llstens ~H:Ql?e.rJ.y •. To lt~~I such periods, with their brevity and abruptness, 70 their ellipses and staccato rhythms, with the connectives moving forward

silently in the minds of the audience, would add greatly to the sermon's impact. (51)

Andrewes proceeded to deliberately draw out the comparison of

Magi and parishioner: "And we, what should we have done? Sure, these men of the East shall rise in Judgement against the men of the West (Mat. (52) 8:11)." The text of this sermon possesses a relentless forward movement, and the congregation is 'swept away' into the powerful unfolding of the argument. Throughout, however, the language is not meretricious; it does not draw undue attention to itself as the work of a conscious stylist. The language always serves a greater end, as words, too, partake of Logos, the Word. Just as Christ partook of manhood,

God's Word exists in the language of postlapsarlan man, and so language aids in the attainment of transcendent reality, if properly understood.

For Andrewes, the language became as real as the event, for both were, or rather are, the manifestations of God in the world. For the Eliza- bethan auditor in Andrewes' congregation, the clearest expression of God's

Grace was the Holy Spirit and the image of Pentecostal fire:

As, in the beginning of the creation~ not onely dixit Deus was required, which was the Word; but fere- batW- Spiritus; the M9ti()n of the Sp}rit, to give the Spirit of life, the life of:naturec As:in the Genesl~9 so in the Palinge-nesie of the world~ a like neces sity: not onely-the Word should take-flesh; but flesh also receive the spTrTt;to 'give llfe,-evei1--ihe Hf..e of grace to the new_creature, (53) 71

The coming of the Holy Spirit to the early Christians completes the

Trinity, restoring humanity to a state of grace, and also completes the circle of Andrewes' pastoral imagery. "Christ is the Word; the Holy Ghost the Seale, in quo signati estis. Ephesians 4:30." The biblical text was the source of inspiration and the 'proof' of all reason for Andrewes. In this particular case, he affirmed his theme with the text "And grieve not the

holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption."

Andrewes constantly returned to the Biblical text in his sermons, incrementally constructing a rich fund of associative meaning, thus strengthening the text. Also, Andrewes' own sermon text became associated with the authority of the Biblical text through similar style and power of expression. To balance the Scriptural authority, he quoted, often in the original Latin or Greek, from other Christian sources. As an

Anglican, Andrewes wished to assert the continuity and validity of

Christian thought whose ancestry predated Luther's famed revolt. But also, Andrewes did not wish to violate "his scholar's sense of the integrity

j. of texts, his delight in language, and his reluctance to distort meaning by

translation." (54) All of this learned piety required a learned and quick-

witted congregation, which Andrewes had in his capacity as court

preacher to James I. Such an audience appreciated Andrewes' subtlety,

scholarship and command of language, as well as his 'metaphysical' style.

Further, they would have appreciated the way in which style came to

mirror content for Andrewes, in whose sermons the Word of God was all- 72 important. Language is a part of Logos, and consequently every word in '. Andrewes' sermons was chosen and placed with care. He established "a genetic relationship between key words (come, venimus, for example) and

'bounces' them off one another in repitition and development." (55) These key words, culled from the Bible and used over and over again,. convey

Andrewes' thought in a poetic and symbolic manner, until the central meaning seems to attain the wholeness, or completeness, that one associates with only the very highest art-forms.

Joan Webber has given clearest expression to this ability in

Andrewes:

His creative use of words, both as signs and as things is an artistic and religious eulogy of creation and transformation in God's Word and world. His mingling of fancy and plain rhythms and rhetoric, while making his prose both beautiful and durable, reflects the indecorous mingling of styles in Christ's birth, ministry, crucifixion and resurrec tion. (56)

The symmetry and inward focus of Andrewes' periods emphasize his total absorption in the Christian ethic and message. Andrewes believed in himself as a preacher of God's Word. His ellipses emphasize the difficulty of salvation, his Latinate word-chimes and patristic quotations accent his sense of tradition and his belief in religious authority. He viewed the

Anglican Church as a European alternative, so he drew from many and diverse sources to establish the universality of the Christian faith and to identify Anglicanism with the Christian traditions of the early Church.

Andrewes' colloquialisms and blunt, Anglo-Saxon language emphasize

Christ's own use of parable and plain language, but, more importantly, they accentuate the human element of Christ's Incarnation. Andrewes 73 saw the central Christian crux as the act of deciding "to find Christ."

This spiritual quest defines his ministry as an active one, so that his concerns are pastoral concerns. His imagery derives in large part from the ordinary people, or supporting cast, involved in the Passion, as well as from Christ, the Holy Spirit and the rain of Pentecostal fire.

Unlike Puritans with their notion of the 'Elect,' and of predestination,

Andrewes believed thoroughly in "the temporal process of redemption" in this world. "With (him) one follows a series of rationally ordered steps through present and future to arrive at (the) eternity "of salvation. The doctrine of salvation in the Anglican manner "explains not only Andrewes' short sentences and concentration of manner, as descriptive of what is brief and temporal, but enriched by God's Mercy; but also his much more logical way of ordering these short sentences." (57) The Anglican emphasis on reason (see chapter on Hooker) can lead to a style such as Andrewes' wherein logical subordination and clarity of expression become a part of the doctrine. It is to Andrewes' credit that he could take such a doctrine and create out of it a rich and poetic style, a style whose beauty and elegance enhances his central Christian theme. 74

Notes

1. Douglas Bush, En~lish Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Cen tury (Oxford, 1966 , p. 316n.

2. T.S. Eliot, "Lancelot Andrewes," Selected Prose (London, 1975), p. 180.

3. Eliot, "Andrewes,", p. 180.

4. G.M. Story ed., "Introduction," Sermons of Lancelot Andrewes (Oxford, 1967), p. XIX.

5. Eliot, "Andrewes," p. 180.

6. John, late Bishop of Ely, "Sermon Preached at the Funerall of the Right Honourable and Reverend Father in God Lancelot late Lord Bishop of Winchester ... on Saturday being the XI of November A.D. MDCXXVI," quoted in Davies, WorshlJ2 and Theology in England (Princeton, 1975), p. 143.

7. Thomas Fuller, Church History XI, p. 126, quoted in Story, "Intro duction," p. XXXVI.

8. Story, "Introduction," p. XXXVI.

9. see also, M.F. Reidy, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (Chicago, 1955), p. 36.

10. Story, "Introduction," p. XXX.

11. Story, "Introduction," p. XXX.

12. Lancelot Andrewes, Sermons, (Oxford, 1967), p. 77.

13. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 78.

14. See Articles II-V of the Thirty-Nine Articles in Bicknell, E.J., A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (Longmans, 1941i), p. 161.

15. Story, "Introduction," p. XXXVIII.

16. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 272.

17. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 47.

18. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 145. 75

19. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 154.

20. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 70-71.

21. Bicknell, Thirty-Nine Articles, p. 339.

22. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 32.

23. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 32.

24. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 36.

25. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 78. This is the theme of virtually every Nativity sermon.

26. Davies, Worship and Theology in England (Princeton, 1975), p. 145- 146.

27. Joan Webber, "Celebration of Word and World in Lancelot An drewes' Style," Seventeenth-Century Prose (New York, 1971), p. 337.

28. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 32n.

29. Davies, Worship, p. 144.

30. Davies, Worship, p. 144.

31. Davies, Worship, p. 143.

32. George Williamson, The Senecan Amble (Chicago, 1966), p. 239.

33. Bush, English Literature, p. 316.

34. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 61.

35. Quoted in Williamson, Senecan Amble, p. 235.

36. Quoted in Reidy, Andrewes, p. 61.

37. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 77-78.

38. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 57.

39. Mazzeo, Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Studies (New York, 1964) p. 3.

40. Story, "Introduction," p. XXVI-XXVII. 76

41. Story, "Introduction," p. XXVIII.

42. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 27.

43. Story, "Introduction," p. XXXIV.

45. Webber, "Word and World," p. 347.

4'f. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 24.

46. Bush, English Literature, p. 317.

47. Reidy, Andrewes, p. 62-3.

48. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 109.

49. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 109.

50. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 109.

51. I am indebted to Dr. Roebuck for suggesting this point.

52. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 249.

53. Andrewes, Sermons, p. 249.

54. Story, "Introduction," p. XXXVIII.

55. Story, "Introduction," p. XI.

56. Webber, "Word and World," p. 337.

57. Webber, "Word and World," p. 348. HI

II ••• a kinde of halfe-horror and amazement." Though truth and falsehood bee Neare twins, yet truth a lit:t1.e elder is; Be busie to seeke her, believe me this, Hee's not of none, nor worst, that seekes the best. To adore, or scorne an image, or protest, Mayall be bad; doubt wisely; in a strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleepe, or runne wrong, is. On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe; And what the h:il1s suddennes resists, winne so; Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight, Thy Soule rest, for none can worke in that night.

The Third Satire, Grierson, i, 157. John Donne, 0572-1631), originally pursued a secular career in the early years of adulthood, but when his hopes for promotion were disap pointed, he turned, at first reluctantly, to a career in the Anglican ministry. He grew up in a Roman Catholic household, but gradually shed this allegiance in youth through the pressures of conscience, politics and economics. He studied at Oxford from the age of thirteen, but subse quently moved to Cambridge. Following his university career, IIhe was a member of Thavies Inn (591) and Lincoln's Inn 0592-4) ... His satires and many amatory poems were evidently written during the 1590'sll 0). In

1596 and 1597 Donne tried his hand at soldiering, along with many other young and ambitious adventurers, when he took part in the Essex expeditions to Spain and the Continent. At some point, Donne must have demonstrated some administrative abilities, for lIin 1597-8 he was made secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper (and hence must have become by this time, if not by the time of the third 'Satire', at least a r nominal Anglican),11 (2) that is, by the middle of the 1590's. Apparently, the question of religious affiliation and belief deeply troubled the eager, skeptical and self-questioning mind of the young John Donne, a man anxious to be acknowledged as a poet and courtier.

Donne secretly married Ann More, Egerton's niece, in December

1601. This marriage destroyed Donne's secular career, for he was hounded and harried out of his position and out of all hope for preferment by the woman's wrathful father, Sir George More: 80

Immediately after his dismission from his service, he sent a sad Letter to his Wife, to acquaint her with it: and, after the subscription of his name, writ

John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done

and God knows it proved too true. (3)

Donne was imprisoned as a result of this affair. He was released shortly thereafter, but for the next seven years "Donne and his increasing family were more or less dependent upon relatives and patrons; difficulties were eased after 1608, when Sir George began to pay a dowry." (4) Donne's frustrated career led him to take up his pen:

During this middle part of his life Donne wrote some prose works: Bictthana tos, Pseudo-Martyr, ... Ignatius His Conclave, Essays in Divinity, ... and some of the Son s and Sonnets, probably most of the 'Holy Sonnets', 1609-10 and the two Anniver saries (pub. 1611, 1612). (5)

Through these works, one can discern the increasingly spiritual aspects of

Donnes' thought emerging, and, as well, his growing allegiance to Ang- licanism.

Donne never did attain the secular career he so earnestly desired~ even though he sat as a member of Parliament in 1601 and 1614, and despite the patronage of Sir Robert Drury. IIIn 1615, when all secular doors seemed to be closed, he was ordained" (6) and presented with two livings. "And now all his studies, which had been occasionally diffused, were all concentred in Divinity." (7) The importance of Donnes youthful,

"diffused" study will emerge presently when we come to examine his (8) style. IIIn 1621 he was nominated Dean of St. PauPs by King James."

He continued in that post until his death in 1631. "Donne's earliest extant sermon was preached at Greenwich on 30 April 1615 (he had been ordained 81 on 23 January): ..• his last, Death's Duel, ... was delivered on 25 February

1631." (9) Given this altogether too brief biographical sketch, it appears that Donne was not only a reluctant Anglican in his earlier years, but also that he entered the ministry with trepidation and doubt, only taking orders when all other possibilities for a fruitful career evaporated, and when his ever-increasing family commitments made a scholar's life financially impossible. Yet there can be no doubt that, once he had decided upon the ministry, he entered upon his new career with enthusiasm, and brought to bear upon it all the weight of his massive intellect. In particular, Donne brought to his new ministry a poet's sensitivity, a philosopher's perception, and a healthy skepticism.

It is widely acknowledged that "Donne's experience, character, and genius set him apart from other divines." (10) Few Deans of St. PaUl's have enjoyed such a worldly and varied training as Donne had. But perhaps the key word in understanding Donne is 'intensity'. Hooker's greatness rests in his allegiance to reason, Andrewes' in his nimble 'wit', but "Donne was a great preacher because he insisted on raising his r audience to his own level by the intensity of his spiritual passion." (11) His passionate, intellectual intensity and poetic sensitivity focussed largely upon the images of Christ - Christ Incarnate, Christ Crucified, and Christ

Resurrected:

Among the 160 survlvmg sermons, 100 ... make in their concluding moments historical or liturgical reference to the Crucifixion, Resurrection or As cension, some 70 of that 10 I making the reference in specifically liturgical terms; 18 end with the formula "the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood." (12) 82

Hooker, in his sermons, as we have seen, was primarily concerned with the notion of God as generative reason and with the rational mind (especially in its moments of doubt) in quest of God. Andrewes' concern was primarily pastoral, in that his notion of God resided primarily in the Holy

Spirit and in the notion of Grace. Donne, on the other hand, was primarily concerned with, at times even fascinated by, the Incarnation. Donne gave supreme expression to Hooker's assertion from the Laws: "That which must save believers is the knowledge of the crosse of Christ the onlie subject of all our preachings." (13) Thus, Donne returned again and again in his sermons to God the Son, to Christ as a man and a fallen being.

In addressing the congregation with this concern, Donne combined a relatively traditional rhetorical technique with his keen intellect and his artistic and aesthetic vision to create what are, at times, profound and moving sermons. Donne often used the three-fold method of interpretation of Scripture, a method combining "the literal, or historical sense; the moral application to us; and the figurative, or typical reference (14) to Christ." He seldom employed Andrewes' four-fold method,'- wherein one focussed upon the 'word'. However, Donne's favourite method of interpretation was allegorical:

In his interpretation of Scripture in the Sermons Donne made large use of the allegorical method which medieval divines had inherited from Clement of Alexandria and the early Christian Platonists. This method, which saw a symbolical meaning as well as the literal one in all the history of the Old Testament, was beginning to go out of fashion in Donne's time. (15) 83

As Donne was in the habit of perceiving resemblances between radically disparate things, and as he "sawall material things as symbols of an inner reality," (16) the allegorical method meshed well with his poetic bent.

Further, allegor ization allowed many meanings to be derived from a single text. Due to his poetic insights, his keen awareness of human psychology, and his know ledge of human passions and weaknesses:

Donne's half-fantastic and poetic interpretations of Scripture have lost little by the passage of time. They are the result, not of scientific investigation of dates and sources but of an insight into the heart of man, which is older than all philosophies, and yet is renewed in every child. Thus the Fall of Man which really concerns him is the fall, not of Adam, but of John Donne and his hearers from the innocence of childhood to the depravity of man hood. (17)

Donne constantly invoked the participation of the congregation in his allegor ical flights.

Despite Donne's enthusiasm for the allegorical method, Evelyn

Simpson felt that "there is a certain narrowness about Donne's range of metaphor and simile, when he is contrasted with a master like Milton." ,"

(18) This 'narrowness', if it is so, centred mainly on Christ as metaphor, or type, for humanity. However, Donne's word-by-word exegeses are not like Bishop Andrewes', wherein Andrewes 'played' with the word itself, such as 'Sign', and thus found himself up some very strange linguistic creeks. Donne played with the metaphors that were poetically occasioned by or linked historically to the Scriptural words, thus creating a connota- tive, suggestive exegesis, one requiring a poet's intuition and a scholar's judgement. It is true that Donne returned again and again to a relatively tram..1"" tIOna. I stOCK'" se ~L 0...f" Imagery pa ++LLerns. (19) loneN' ~I'meless, uonne's~ • 84 poetic use of these traditional, medieval patterns was fresh and vivid. His language, structures and rhythmic numbers occasionally lifted his sermons to creative heights:

To save this body from the condemnation of ever lasting corruption, where the wormes that we breed are our betters, because they have a life, where the dust of dead Kings is blowne into the River, and the muddy river tumbled into the Sea, and the Sea remaunded into all the veynes and channels of the earth; to save this body from everlasting dissolution, dispersion, dissipation, and to make it in a glorious Resurrection, not onely a Temple of the holy Ghost, but a Companion of the holy Ghost in the kindgome of heaven, This Christ became this Jesus. (20)

Note how, as he moved through the images of "dissolution", "dispersion," and "dissipation," Donne returned to Christ as the key to salvation.

A major problem with Donne is to determine just how much of his style was conscious and artificial, and how much was, like Hooker's, an instinctive seconding of his central Christian concern. Donne~ 'narrowness' can lead to stylistic problems. As with Andrewes, many passages in the sermons show that "there is a good deal of repetition in his work." (21),_

Douglas Bush, in a lengthy comment, attacks the alleged 'liberalism' of

Donne:

Donne the preacher could speak in that vein (of religious liberalism), but normally he was much less magnarrimous and much more rigid. His occasional pleas against strife over non-essentials lose force when we see what he regards as essentials, and when, in non-essentials, Englishmen are bidden to submit to the kings' directions. Donne's court of appeal, 'the Catholique Church', is, concretely, the church of the Bible, the Creeds and the Fathers as it is continued in the Church of England (though Luther and Calvin are treated with respect); 'for to that Heaven which belong to the Catholique Church, I shall never come, except I go by way of 85

the Catholique Church'. Donne incessantly attacks Rome, the 'Devils' instrument' that propogates 'the doctrines of Devils'; the blessed King James 'leads us' in the know ledge that 'the Pope is Antichrist'. When religion is involved with political allegiance, 'the temporal sword may be drawn as well as the spiritual.' The enemies of God and His Anglican Church, are atheists, idolators, Jews, Turks, Pa pists, and 'non-Comformitans' or 'seditious and schismaticall Separatists.' 'Sects are not bodies, they are but rotten boughes, gangrined limmes, fragmentary chips, bloune off by their oune spirit of turbulency, fallen off by the waight of their own pride, or hewen off by the Excommunications and censures of the Church'; Nor, apparently, does Chrisfs Kingdom have any room for 'those herds of vagabonds, and incorrigible rogues that fill por ches, and barnes in the Country,' of whom a very. great part were never baptized. Not to multiply quotations, it would seem that Dr. Donne's liberal charity is exaggerated. (22)

This passage has been quoted at length in order to demonstrate that the application of the standards of nineteenth-century liberalism to an

Anglican divine of Jacobean London can be, at best, misleading, and at worst, fatuous. Donne lacked, in part, the pastoral concerns of Andrewes,

and the universal charitas of Hooker, yet one must remember that

Hooker, as a man with virtually no ambitions for preferments and 'career',

was an exceptional man in the Elizabethan scheme of things. There are

many passages in Andrewes' works that are similar to these from Donne's

sermons.

What we in the modern world call fanaticism and intolerance was a

commonplace of religious controversy in the time following Luther's

revolt. It would be pointless to 'apologize' for the worst in Donne, but

Evelyn Simpson has given a sensible defence of the body of Donne's work

in a suitably poetic manner: 86

The morbidity of Donne's fancy has its own impor tance. It is like the mists which rise at evening from the fens and produce the marvellous colours of the fenland sunsets. The mists are unhealthy and have no beauty in themselves, but the light of the setting sun, as it struggles through them, is refracted into the strangest harmonies of orange, crimson and copper. Donne's work has about it something of the sinister glories of such a sunset. The dying splendour of the Elizabethan age - nay, more, the break-up of a whole system of thought, is reflected in his pages ... The harsh ugliness of certain parts of Donne's work did not repel his readers (auditors). They admired his prodigious display of wit, whether he showed it in season or out of season. But his fame would have perished,as Ben Jonson predicted, if he had not possessed higher qualities than those which attracted atten tion to him at that moment. (23)

The "sinister glories" of Donne's sermons, those qualities which provoke such attacks and defences from otherwise dispassionate critics, deserve closer attention.

Winfried Schleiner, in his book The Imagery of Donne's Sermons, says that Valerio, a Renaissance Spanish writer whom Donne probably read, argued that:

it is not a superficial similarity between two things, but their relationship within a hierarchy of values that is the criteron for successful metaphor. Such a hierarchy is the basis of the lowering as well as the heightening of style. (24) (emphasis mine)

This aspect of traditional allegorical and rhetorical argument has too often been neglected in studies of Donne. Donne's originality has been over-emphasized to the detriment of his own allegiance to tradition.

Further, "it was not an urge to explore the 'intrinsic agonies of his viscera', but an urge to communicate," (25) that led Donne to use 'low' imagery. One cannot consider any image or metaphor without taking into 87 account its relative purpose, that is, its place in the scheme of the author.

Thus, for example, any individual metaphor from the "Now if nature should intermit her course", passage, above p. 39, by itself is not a very powerful image, but the cumulative effect of the long list of images is resplendent with meaning. SimIlarly, "Donne consistently used different aspects of the same things as tools to get at the meaning of the metaphor." (26) Thus, to turn an image inside out and upside down, to examine its best and worst qualities, seemed essential to Donne:

No metaphor, no comparison is too high, none too low, too triviall, to imprint in you a sense of Gods ever lasting goodnesse towards you. (27)

Thus Donne's apparent lack of decorum, and his apparent fascination with death and corruption, can in fact be traced to a conscious allegiance to a tradition of preaching of which Donne appears to be the last English exponent. Further, Donne's poetic qualities and conscious craftsmanship carried his sermons over what could have been, and occasionally definitely were, the obstacles of his medieval bent and 'inward' focus.

Further, there is a quality in his sermons which is unique, which '" contributes to his glory and to his placement outside the sermonic traditions of seventeenth-century England. Hooker's style led to Jeremy

Taylor, Andrewes instigated a whole stylistic school of preaching, but

Donne's sermonic style, though oft praised, remained strangely isolated.

There is a unifying spirit, a common thread of thought that runs through all the sermons, informing both style and content, that both repels and 88 attracts the reader-auditor. In many ways, it is unique to Donne in his own age, but which, before Donne, found expression in the works of

Augustine, and before him in the Psalms of David. It is the desire to know, the insatiable thirst for knowledge of the world and of humanity that drives the seeker into every corner and cubbyhole of experience and knowledge, both high and low, and also drives the questing mind within itself, seeking the centre of all things in knowledge of self and the world.

Happily or unhappily, in the Christian tradition such restless pursuit of truth is coupled to the knowledge of the Fall, to the certainty of belief in the degraded and sinful state of postlapsarian humanity, and to awareness of the slow, complex and painful paths to redemption and salvation.

Donne gave supreme expression to Hooker's assertion from the Laws:

"That which must save believers is the knowledge of the crosse of Christ the onlie subject of all our preaching." (28). Given this, it is not to be wondered at that Donne the poet and Donne the preacher should seek out and describe the harsh, the ugly, and the sinful aspects of human experience, for these too are a part of Providence and must be understood'- before they can be overcome. Donne went beyond Andrewes and Hooker in this, and is much more of what we would consider a 'modern' writer in his relentless pursuit of the 'realistic' aspects of the human condition, even though he was more traditional than his contemporaries. To ascribe

Donne's alleged 'obsession' with graves, death, putrefaction of flesh, and ugliness to some alleged flaw of character or weakness of thought is to belittle the creative process itself and lessen the impact of Donne's themes. He was not a decorous writer in the sense that Hooker was 89 decorous, nor ever intended to be one, and one ought not to measure a writer by standards which he has, in the crucible of creative thought, consciously and deliberately rejected. Given all this, let us turn to a study of Donne's doctrinal and stylistic emphases in order to determine, if possible, the central Christian message in his sermons.

Donne as a Metaphysical Preacher

The claim has been made by several scholars that Donne is of the

'metaphysical' school of preaching that Andrewes founded and perfected.

Up to a point, this assertion is valid. One would assume that a

'metaphysical' poet would also be a 'metaphysical' preacher. There are affinities between the styles of Donne and Andrewes, but there are also marked differences. Donne was a 'metaphysical' preacher, but not a

'witty' one: The difference lies in Donne's worldly education and experience:

The other preachers of the school of Laud and Andrewes were devout, learned and concerned about ecclesiastical politics; Donne was the man of the Renaissance - turned preacher- Tamer lane confined to a pulpit, or Faustus desiring all know ledge and avid for sensual enjoyment, but held spell-bound by the eyes of the Crucified. (29)

As a result, Donne's approach to his material was very different from

Andrewes or Hooker:

He is poignant rather than sublime, but from first to last he is fiercely individualistic; and this, combined with the impression he gives of having exhausted all departments of human enquiry and rung the changes on the whole gamut of human passion, only to find intellectual satisfaction in the 90

dogmata of the Christian Faith and emotional satisfaction in the embrace of the Christian God, explains his connection with but superiority to, all other 'metaphysical' divines of his time. (30)

Donne's "many sided and peculiarly interesting personality", (31) evident, at times stridently so, in every sermon, contributed to his uniqueness.

Donne's usual use of the standard 'metaphysical' devices also align him, yet set him apart. He was a master of far-fetched imagery:

This habit of mind ... was natural to Donne, to whom anything in heaven or earth could be used to illustra te anything else. The reader of the sermons is constantly surprised by some brilliant compari son which seems at first merely fanciful, but on examination proves to be really illuminating." (32)

Like Andrewes, Donne employed the sudden twist, or shock of surprise, and recognition to reveal the reasonableness of the argument. Donne was aware of the effectiveness of 'metaphysical' devices:

We need not call that a Fable, but a Parable, where we heare, That a Mother, to still her froward childe told him she would cast him to the Wolf, the Wolf should have him; and the Wolf which was at the doore, and within hearing, waited, and hoped he should have the child indeed, but the childe being stille, and the Mother pleased, then she saith, so shall we kill the Wolf, the Wolf shall have none of my childe, and then the Wolf stole away. No metaphor, no comparison is too high, none too 10V/," too triviall, to im rint in you a sense of Gods everlasting goodnesse towards you. 33 emphasis mine).

The reasonableness of 'metaphysical' style is very different from Hooker's use of reason, which insists upon a sense of rightness, hierarchy and order, in passages such as "Now if Nature should intermit her course", quoted on p. 39 above:

Unlike classical oratory, Donne's sermons are not addressed primarily to the reason. Rational ar- 91

gument, though not excluded from the sermon, is more appropriate for a lecture, which concerns "matters of Doctrine, and points of Divinity"; a sermon "intends Exhortation principally and Edifi cation, and a holy stirring of religious affections." (34) .

The 'metaphysical' preacher cultivated "originality and audacity", (35) to make his point. Donne also used paradox to try to lead his auditors to an understanding of the Kindgom of God:

No man ever saw God and livId, and yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him I shall never dye. (36)

Also, playing on the notion of pride as a sin, Donne wrote:

Consider the dignity of man in his nature, and then, in the Sonne of God his assuming that nature, which gave it a new dignity and this will beget in thee a Pride that God loves, a valuing of thy selfe above all the tentation of this world. (37)

In this use of paradox, and of word plays, word-chimes, puns, jokes,

Latinisms and the like, Donne was no different from many of his conte mporar ies.

Another similarity lies in his appeal to authority:

The list of authorities given -at the end of the LXXX Sermons shows that the authors to whom he referred most frequently were the great Fathers of the Church, Augustine pre-eminently, then Jerome, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, as well as others of more doubtful orthodoxy, such as Origen and Tertullian; the mystical writers, Diony sius Areopagiticus; Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux; the Schoolmen, Aquinas and his followers; the reformers, Luther and Calvin; and the Roman theologians, Bellarmine and Cajetan. (38)

Donne drew ideas from many sources. For the most part, Donne's references are like Andrewes, illustrative and not integral, and, as Allen 92 has shown in his essay, "Dean Donne Sets His Text", many of the references, especially to Hebraic sources, were culled from sixteenth century glosses on the Bible. (39) Indeed, there is little evidence to show that Donne was a scholar immersed in the Christian tradition. His style was heavily influenced by certain Church Fathers, but not, for the most part, his substance, and this is the major difference between Donne and his fellow 'metaphysicals'.

For Donne, the great sources were similar to Hooker's, the Book of

Nature and the Book of Scripture. Donne did not approach the two books of God in Hooker's manner, though:

His subtle, self-torturing intellect, whetted on what may be described as rapacious reading over a long period of enforced idleness, had led him to survey problems of a more profound order than were those usually discussed in the schools. (40)

It appears that Donne was repetitive and derivative in his use of learned sources, and his allegorizations were often borrowed wholesale from patristic writings and Renaissance commentaries, but when he turned to his own life and his own world, his images and metaphors took on a startlingly fresh, vivid and original texture. When he looked about him, his ministry became active, his sermons charged with a spirituality that is sometimes missing in the sermons of Donne the scholar:

Is the world a great and harmonious Organ, where all parts Are play'd, and all play parts; and must thou only sit idle and hear it? Is every body else made to be a Member, and to do some real office for the sustenation of this great Body, this World; and wilt thou only be no member of this Body? Thinkest thou that thou wast made to be a Cos Amaris, a Mole in the Face for Ornament, a Man of delight in the World? Because thy wit, thy fashion, and some such nothing as that, rnade thee a de- 93

lightful and acceptable companion, wilt thou there fore pass in jeast, and be nothing? If thou wilt be no link of Gods Chain, thou must have no part in the influence and providence derived by that, suc cessively to us. Since it is for thy fault that God hath cursed the Earth, and that therefore it must bring forth Thorns, and Thistles, wilt not thou stoop down, nor endanger the pricking of the hand, to weed them up? Thinkest thou to eat bread, and not sweat? Hast thou a perogative above the common Law of Nature? Or must God insert a particular clause of exemption for thy sake? (4-1)

Donne's approach to Nature then, is from a human perspective, in this case as if a judge or probation officer were addressing a recalcitrant delinquent, not from Hooker's grand, schematic perspective.

With himself at the centre, Donne's vision radiated outward through all the world towards God. Thus, often, John Donne, preacher, became the measure of all things, the focus of the text, and the spiritual guide for

his flock. Speaking on the text of Isaiah lXV, 20, "The child shall die a

hundred years old", Donne announced:

Earth cannot receive, Heaven cannot give such another universal soul to all: all persons, all actions, as Mercy. And were I the childe of this Text, that were to live a hundred yeares; I would ask no other marrow to my bones, no other wine to my heart, no other light to mine eyes, no other art to my understanding, no other eloquence to my tongue, then the power of apprehending for my self, and the power of deriving and conveying upon others by my Ministry, the Mercy, the early Mercy, the everlasting Mercy of yours, and my God. (4-2)

Donne was not a careful, painstakingly accurate theologican as were

Hooker and Andrewes. Rather, he was the poet of intuitively-appre-

hended spiritual truths, truths perceived in a vision that expanded

outwards from an artistic and human centre towards God, especially

to\vards Christ: 9~

The difference for Donne between egocentricity and regeneracy or grace is not that the self gets displaced from the center of its own cosmos to a remote orbit, but rather that the self with whole will opens and orients itself to the God of "Being" both incarnate and transcending all incarnation. (~3)

It ought not to be surprising that a poet would see the crux of Christianity as a struggle between the ego and its attendant passions on the one hand, and Christ and His saving grace on the other. Thus Donne's readings of the Book of Nature are macrocosm-microcosm oriented. Yet always, "it was an inner resemblance rather than an outer which he sought." (~~)

Further, Donne perfected "a mode of personalized generality that might be called perennial lived experience." (~5) Thus Donne lies outside the

metaphysical schools.

The perfect type of humanity, or the greatest example of

'personalized generality' was Christ. Donne's style is closely matched to his concern for the various images of Christ, and at this point it becomes difficult to separate the doctrinal and stylistic elements of his sermons.

Just as Andrewes and Hooker achieved a synthesis of style and content

that reflected their central Christian concerns, so too did Donne. "When

he spoke of the love of Christ as manifested in the Incarnation or the

A tonement, his words became full of a fire and a passion which were

lacking in his treatment of some parts of the Christian faith". (~6)

Donne's fascination with Christ Incarnate stemmed, most probably, from

the knowledge of God's humanity, and thus Christ's life became the most

potent symbol and image of the personal struggle for salvation. Further,

Donne's artistic sensibilities were roused by the Passion stories, in 95 particular the Gospel of St. John, and by the Psalms of David, for in

David Donne perceived a type of humanity to complement Christ.

In a sermon preached at Whitehall, April 30, 1616, on the Text of

Matthew 9:13, Donne demanded of his congregation:

Shall we wonder that Christ would live with sin ners, who was content to die for sinners? Wonder that he would eat the bread and Wine of sinners, that gave sinners his oun flesh to eat, and his oun blood to drink? Or if we do wonder at this, (as, indeed, nothing is more wonderful) yet let us not calumniate, let us not mis-interpret any way, that he shall be pleased to take, to derive his mercy to any man: but, (to use Clement of Alexandria's comparison) as we tread upon many herbs neg ligently in the field, but when we see them in an Apothecaries shop, we begin to think, that there is some vertue in them; so howsoever we have a perfect hatred, and a religious despite against a sinner, as a sinner; yet if Christ Jesus shall have been pleased to come to his door, and to have stood, and knock'd, and enter'd, and sup'd, and brought his dish, and made himself that dish, and seal'd a reconcilitation to that sinner, in admitting him to that Table, to that Communion, let us forget the Name of Publican, the Vice of any particular profession; and forget the name of sin ner, the history of any mans former life; and be glad to meet that man now in the arms, and to grow up with that man now in the bowels of Christ Jesus. (47) (emphasis mine)

This passage clearly demonstrates Donne's sense of Christs' humanity.

Here we perceive Christ visiting, even cooking his own food, and dining with others, and through such ordinary activities bringing His extraordinary gift of salvation to even the lowest of sinners. Donne emphasized the personality of Christ and sinners, and Christ in the darkness of mortal existence. If we compare this with Hooker's "Light-darkness" sequence from the sermon ilon the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect," quoted on p. 40 above, one can immediately perceive the major 96 differences between them. Whereas Hooker's argument develops reasonably through abstract, or at least, non-personal metaphors, Donne's argument develops through an imagined, poetic presentation of Christs humanity. In another excerpt, Donne pointed out that Christ was a mirror for man:

A Crystall glasse will not show a man his face, except it be steeled, except it be darkned on the backside: Christ as he was a pure Crystall glasse, as was God, had not beene a glasse for us, to have seene our selves in, except he had been steeled, darkened with our human nature. (48)

Donne was fascinated by life itself, as the evidence of his life, his poetry, and sermons suggests. As he admired life above all else, the living God,

God within man, Christ infirm and limited as all men are became his concern. Hooker attained his knowledge of God through reason and

Andrewes through pastoral concern for salvation, but Donne made his approach to God through his knowledge of the human condition. Given life's ability to constantly surprise, amaze, delight and disconcert the perceptive observer, it is no wonder that Donne's sermons are often highly .. original and surprising.

Yet Donne's uniqueness and genius well up from a yet deeper source.

Evelyn Simpson has shown how Donne's sermons and poetry so closely (49) parallel each other. Thus Donne's aesthetic sense was highly developed before he came to his ministry. Hooker, we must keep in mind, had a unifying theological-philosophical vision of God and of the universe made purposeful by reason; Andrewes had a unifying vision of the spirit and its journey, or quest to salvation, given greatest expression in his use of the supporting cast at the Nativity, such as the three wise man of the 97

East. Donne, on the other hand, possessed a unifying artistic or aesthetic vision of religion, God and the universe, and humanity's place in the essentially beautiful scheme of Christ. Thus, for example, the strange dichotomy between Donne's emphasis on the grotesque and horrible on the

one hand and beauty and grandeur on the other stem from the same source as Andrewes 'metaphysical wit' - knowledge of the indecorous mingling of

Divinity and humanity in the person and presence of Christ. A great deal of the 'paradoxical' nature of 'metaphysical' poetry and prose can be

traced to this source, but for Donne, it was the beauty of the mingling

that appealed, for the Passion story roused his creative energies to fever

pitch. Donne's sermonic genius lies in the way he employed his imagery,

in his use of paradox, in the poetic language, and in the internal rhythms

and harmonies of his greatest passages, for Donne never sought to prove

the rightness of Christianity, but rather sought to affirm it by, at times,

soaring with the congregation above the petty controversies of the day.

Donne had, as one would expect from a poet, an acute sensitivity to the

expressive value of the form. His pacing, imagery and style work

together effectively to reveal his themes.

Donne was very aware of the poetic quality of his work, and he traced

this quality back to its source. Preaching, he said:

is a grave exercise, but not a sordid, not a bar barous, not a negligent. There are not so eloquent books in the world, as the Scriptures ... The style of the Scriptures is a diligent, and an artificial style; and a great part thereof in a musical, in a metrical, in a measured composition, in verse ... So the Holy Ghost hath spoken in those Instru ments, whom he chose for the penning of the Scriptures, and so he would in those whom he sends for the preaching thereof: he would put in thern a 98

care of delivering God(s) message, with prepara tion; and not barbarously, not suddenly, not occa sionally, not extemporarily, which might derogate from the dignity of so great a service.(50)

Donne was a careful craftsman, intensely aware of the work needed to create the poetic, intuitive style that he advocated:

The Holy Ghost in penning the Scriptures delights himself, not only with a propriety, but with a delicacy, and harmony, and melody of language; with height of Metaphors, and other figures, which may work great impressions upon the Readers, and not with barbarous, or trlviall, or market or homely language ... (51)

Thus, for Donne, the greatest source for authority in religious matters and inspiration for style was, as it was for Augustine, the Scriptures:

Many of Donne's habits of sermonIzmg are governed by the Augustinian theory of Christian eloquence. His use of Biblical metaphors as the imagery of his sermons derives from the conviction that Scriptural rather than human eloquence saves souls; indeed Donne's own style varies to some extent according to the style of his text .•. In their very structure the sermons re-enact the truth which Donne sees in the texts, with the result that the sermons are actions imitative of or analogous - to the Biblical action. Finally, the sermons are aimed primarily at the soul through memory rather than through rational intellect; in this they follow the Augustinian conception of memory as a great spiritual faculty. (52)

The Scriptures prove and affirm for Donne that his style is the best for him.

Perhaps the passage most revealing of Donne's spiritual and stylistic beliefs was delivered by him at St. Paul's in 1627:

we should not make Religion too homely a thing, but come alwayes to all Acts, and Exercises of Religion, with reverence, with feare, and trembling and make a difference, between Religious and Civil Actions. In the frame and constitution of al 99

Religions, these Materials, these Elements have ever entred; Some words of a remote signification, not vulgarly understood, some actions of a kinde of halfe-horror and amazement, some places of reser vation and retirednesse, and appropriation to some sacred persons, and inaccessible to all others. (53) (emphasis mine)

Donne was a master of the long period and the complex paragraph, but his ordering principles were very different from Hooker's logical subordination, definition and distinction. Rather, his periods unfold, as the extracts above demonstrate, with the intent of constructing an intensity of mood and feeling that is atmospheric, charging Donne's straightforward

Anglicanism with hidden depths of meaning and a sense of mystery. This charged quality is evident throughout Donne's best sermons, and spora- dically in the others, but it makes its greatest impact in the Christmas and Easter sermons, when he could concentrate on his favourite theme, the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

Probably the clearest, and certainly one of the most powerful, expressions of this quality occurs in the following passage, on the text

"What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death?":

If I can say, (and my conscience doe not tell me, that I belye my oune state) if I can say, That the blood of my Saviour runs in my veines, That the breath of his Spirit quickens all my purposes, that all my deaths have their Resurrection, all my sins their remorses, all my rebellions their reconcilia tions, I will harken no more after this question, as it is intended de morte naturali. of a naturall death, I know I must die that death, what care I? nor de morte spirituali, the death of a sin, I know I doe,and shall die so; why despaire I? But I will finde out another death, mortem raptus, a death of rapture, and of extasie, that death which S.Paul died more than once, The death which S.Gregory speaks of, Divina contemplatio quoddam sepul chrum ani mae, The contemplation of God, and 100

heaven, is a kinde of buriall, and Sepulchre, and reste of the soule; and in this death of rapture, and extasie, in the death of the Contemplation of my interest in my Saviour, I shall flnde my self, and all my sins enterred, and entombed in his wounds, and like a Lily of Paradise, out of red earth, I shall see my soule rise out of his blade, in a candor, and in an innocence, contracted there, acceptable in the sight of his Father. (54)

Notice the use of balanced clauses, of repetition, both of key words and phrases, such as "all my .... their", "death", "sin", and "I". Note, too, the way the text keeps echoing itself, as images come in waves, establishing what one could call a tidal rhythm. There is a great poetic sweep and grandeur of vision in the unfolding of the argument that carries the congregation along as on the crest of a flood, hurling the auditor, and

John Donne, ever closer to Christ and reconciliation. But Donne is ever- present in his words:

It is this note of intense personal religious ex perience which gives to the Sermons their unique power. Behind their eloquence and elaborate rhe toric we hear the voice of a human soul, tortured at times by remorse for past sins, agonizing with his hearers to rescue them from temptations, of which he knows the awful power, but inspired also by a great devotion. (55)

Donne's humanity, his personal weaknesses and strengths, invade the texts, improving and changing the sermon, metamorphosizing persuasive prose into something stranger and more glorious.

Yet Donne was aware of even this process. One ought never to forget that he was a careful and conscious stylist. Like Augustine, Donne felt that the study of rhetoric was very important, not for ornament, but:

to trouble the understanding, to displace, and dis compose and disorder the judgement ... or to empty it of former apprehensions, and to shake beliefs, 101

with which it had possessed it self before, and then, when it is thus melted to poure it into new molds, when it is thus mollified, to stamp and imprint new formes, new images, new opinions in it. (56)

Donne found that rhetoric worked most effectively, for him, in his use of poetic imagery. The following passage, from a Christmas Day sermon at

St. Paul's, 1624, demonstrates his mastery of Augustinian principles of rhetoric:

If some King of the earth have so large an extent of Dominion in North, and South as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his Dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his Dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together; He brought light out of darknesse, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the wayes of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been be nighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclypsed, damped and benummed, smothered and stupified, till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadowes, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons. (57)

To the arsenal of the rhetorician, Donne added the arsenal of a poet. In this passage we see the use of repetition, word-play, internal harmony, balancing of images and clauses, and the use of tidal rhythms. The use of these repetitive rhythms, in phrases that keep collapsing back on the one before, yet constantly changing the meaning, often in disconcerting ways, is Donne's hallmark. In the last part of this excerpt, Donne denied the usual images of grace, "the dawning of the day", and "the bud in spring", thus disconcerting, temporarily, his audience, only to more effectively portray the notion of grace in the image of "the Sun at noon." In denying 102 the standard cliche in order to create his own fresh and vivid image,

Donne proved himself a master of rhetoric, and, of course, the greatest master of Christian rhetoric, aside from the authors of the Scriptures, was Augustine:

S. Augustine does not onely professe of himselfe, Non praeter mitto Istos numeros clausularum, That he studied at home, to make his language sweet, and harmonious, and acceptable to Gods people, but he believes also, that S.Paul himselfe, and all the Apostles, had a delight, and a complacency, and a holy melting of the bowels, when the congre gation liked their preaching. (58)

Thus, Donne's notion of Christian rhetoric went beyond reason, argument and persuasion, to a notion very much akin to the Pentecostal fire - transcendence. All his poetic devices and intuitive meanings, his oceanic sentences and tidal rhythms, are aimed at this goal of 'revelation' in the auditor. Because of this, "even in those places where Donne's personal idiosyncrasies are most apparent there is a poise and grandeur about his conceptions to which no other Anglo-Catholic preacher attained." (59) 102

Notes

1. Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1966), p. 133n.

2. Bush, English Literature, p. l33n.

3. Izaak Walton, "Life of Donne" in Lives (Oxford, 1973), p. 29.

4. Bush, English Literature, p. 133n.

5. Bush, English Literature, p. 133n.

6. Bush, English Literature, p. 133n.

ll 7. Walton, "Life , p. 48.

8. Bush, English Literature, p. 133n.

9. Bush, English Literature, p. 321.

10. Bush, English Literature, p. 318.

11. Evelyn Simpson, A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne (Oxford, 1969), p. 73.

12. Gale Carrithers, Donne at Sermons (S.U.N.Y., 1972), p. 16.

13 Hooker, Laws II, p. 96.

14. Bush, English Literature, p. 322.

15. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 271.

16. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 271.

17. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 271.

18. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 60.

19. See W. Schleiner, The Imagery of John Donne's Sermons (Brown, 1970).

20. Donne, 3.302 of Simpson-Potter ed., quoted in Schleiner, Imagery, p.41.

21. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 60.

22. Bush, English Literature, pp. 324-25.

23. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 66. 103

24. Schleiner, Imagery, p. 46.

25. Schleiner, Imagery, p. 84.

26. Schleiner, Imagery, p. 177.

27. Donne, L Sermons 26:228, quoted in Simpson, Prose Works, p.59n.

28. Hooker, Laws II, p. 96.

29. W.F. Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson (London, 1932), p. 181.

30. Mitchell, Pulpit Oratory, p. 181.

31. Mitchell, Pulpit Oratory, p. 181.

32. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 57.

33. Donne, L Sermons 26:228, quoted in Simpson, Prose Works, p. 59n.

34. Dennis Quinn, "Donne's Christian Eloquence," Seventeenth Century Prose (New York, 1971), p. 358.

35. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 57.

36. Donne, L Sermons 14:117.

37. Donne, L Sermons 38:352, quoted in Simpson, Prose Works, p. 65.

38. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 113.

39. Allen, "Dean Donne Sets His Text" ELH, X (1943).

40. Mitchell, Pulpit Oratory, p. 180.

41. Donne, XXVI Sermons 24:343, quoted in Simpson, Prose Works, p. 78.

42. Donne, L Sermons 26:222, quoted in Simpson, Prose Works, p. 263.

43. Carrithers, Donne at Sermons, p. 50.

44. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 57. 104

45. Carrithers, Donne at Sermons, p. 103.

46. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 75.

47. Donne, Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels, ed. Simpson (London, 1963), p. 207-8.

48. Donne, L Sermons 33: 292, quoted in Simpson, Prose Works, p. 187.

49 Simpson, Prose Works, p. 60-63.

50. Donne, LXXX Sermons 55:556, quoted in Mitchell, Pulpit Oratory, p. 189.

51. Donne, LXXX Sermons 55:556, quoted in Mitchell, Pulpit Oratory, p. 189.

52. Quinn, "Christian Eloquence," p. 372.

53. Donne, vol. 7, sermon 12, pp. 522, quoted in Carrithers, Donne at Sermons, p. 73.

54. Donne, LXXX Sermons 27:273-4, quoted in Simpson, Prose Works, p.94.

55. Simpson, Prose Works, p. 263.

56. Donne, LXXX Sermons 71:723, quoted in Mitchell, Pulpit Oratory, p. 191.

57. Donne, Sermons on Psalms, p. 182.

58. Donne, L Sermons 8:149, quoted in Schleiner, Imagery, p. 53.

59. Mitchell, Pulpit Oratory, p. 193. IV

n 000 'to search into unprofitable curiosities. n Language most shewes a man: speake tlJat I may see thee. It spr:ings out of the most retired and :inmost parts of us, and is the Image of the Parent of it, the m:ind.

Ben JonSon "Timber, or Discoveries," :in Works, VIII, p. 625,1947 edition. In our post-industrial, holocaust-expectant world, writers are often purely and only writers. The role of a writer is defined, in many instances, as detached, observant and passive, a role in which the writer looks on through his artistic microscope, but does not take part. That is, his prose is detached and unaligned, if it is to be 'art'. Thus an objective

'distance' obtains between the reader and the subject under examination, contributing to the very process of alienation that modern art ironically decries.

Hooker, Donne and Andrewes, too, were concerned with alienation of the spirit and its manifestations in the world. But, in their case, these notions were called 'sin' and 'evil'. The difference lies primarily in belief.

Their passionate commitment· to the teleological principles of Anglican,

Christian thought led to a fusion of style and content in the crucible of belief. As we have seen, Hooker stressed the importance in the Trinity of

God the Father, due to his belief that reason is the path to salvation.

Andrewes believed primarily in God's Grace and the efficacy of the Holy

Spirit. Donne, on the other hand, could well have spoken with Paul, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live." (Galatians 2:20).

In turning to their congregations with these concerns, each developed his own particular style and range of metaphor in order to convey his message. This artistic aspect of sermons arises out of the monumental difficulty of attempting to express the inexpressible. Like the poet, the preacher seeks to give expression to the unseen and unknowable elements of experience. Despite the grave danger of over- simplifying, there are, I feel, two essential aspects to any religious 107 108 doctrine - the mystical and rational elements. The reasonableness of religious persuasion is in, I would argue, the actual argument. That is to say, if the argument convinces, it demonstrates the reasonableness of the doctrine:

No religion can expect to survive unless it can express its fundamental convictions in such a way as to show them to be intrinsically reasonable.(l)

Hooker, of course, would have seconded such a statement. He sought, as we have seen, religious assent through a form of rational transcendence.

In their own ways, Andrewes and Donne also employed a notion of reason in their sermons.

Andrewes' sermons seek assent from the auditor through what is, effectively, an overpowering intellectual assault. The appeal of his sermons is to people who enjoy verbal fireworks and dazzling rhetoric.

Yet because he sought the greater goal of salvation, Andrewes transcended mere verbal conceits, and, like Hooker, forced intuitive assent through the sheer, overpowering weight and complexity of argument and presentation. Donne, too, sought rational assent to his central Christian message, albeit not to the extent of Hooker or Andrewes. Where Hooker and Andrewes dealt with concepts, language as a tool of reason, and the rational order of Nature, Donne's notion of reason focussed on the problems of human inquiry:

Even in spirituall things, there may be a fulnesse, and no satisfaction, And there may be a satis faction, and no fulness; I may have as much know ledge, as is presently necessary for my salvation, and yet have a restlesse and unsatisfied desire, to search into unprofitable curiosities, unrevealed myster ies, and inextricable perplexities: And, on the other side, a man may be satisfied, and thinke 109

he knowes all, when God knowes, he knowes no thing at all; for I know nothing, if I know not Christ crucified, And I know not that, if I know not how to apply him to my selfe, Nor doe I know that, if I embrace him not in those meanes, which he hath afforded me in his Church, in his Word, and Sacra ments. (2)

Donne sought to draw assent from his congregation through shared

experience, from the practical side of reason that is forced to make decisions and judgments in the daily world of ordinary life. Thus Donne

focussed on Christ as a person, an ordinary human being forced by his

prison of unwitting flesh to make decisions like any mortal.

In turning to the other rather arbitrarily defined aspect of religious

experience, the mystical aspect, there is less to focus upon, in a critical

sense. None of these three preachers are considered to be mystics, nor

did their approach to doctrine arise primarily from the mysterious

elements of Christianity. Yet when they did attempt to convey to their

congregations some notion of the mystical, their approach was as consistent and 'typical' of their beliefs as their use of reason.

The most significant tool, in language, for expressing the mysterious

is metaphor. Metaphor is an inevitable element of all religious

expression:

All doctrinal statements must partake of the na ture of metaphor. They are true as far as they go, but they cannot represent the whole truth. A metaphor must never be pressed beyond the limits of the truth that it was formed to express. (3)

Reason seeks to prove, metaphoric expression to affirm, religious belief.

Neither is capable, in and of itself, of encompassing Christian religious

exper ience. However, all three of the preachers under study here made 110 significant use of metaphor, in their own ways. For the most part, the personality of their member of the Trinity that they focussed on guided them in their use of metaphor.

Within the Christian tradition:

Human personality is the highest form of existence within our own experience, and we are obliged to think of God in terms of the highest that we know. However far God's life may excel our own, it cannot fall below it. The God who created human personality cannot Himself be less than personal. We do not claim that in describing God in terms of human personality we are giving a complete or adequate description of Him. All that we say is that this is the least inadequate language that we can use. (4)

Hooker was definite in his belief in God the Father, the creator and law- giver, and, of course, his notion of reason derived from this belief and its long traditions in Western thought. Thus Hooker was not overly con cerned with processes of redemption as he was with explicating the

Divinity. His sermons are more reflective and philosophical than active and pastoral, and his use of metaphor is limited, except for a few passages, and rather abstract. Andrewes, however, was very much concerned with redemption in time. The Holy Spirit hovers over his sermons, charging them with a notion of the efficacy of God's Grace.

Thus Andrewes focussed upon the people around Christ, to study the presence of Grace in human experience, and the early Christians, upon whom the Holy Spirit descended in undiluted measure. His metaphors and images are often of these people and their activities. Andrewes was aware of the great gulf of time that put an impenetrable barrier between his congregation and the active Grace of the early Christians. He was III also aware that language was the only means available to him to penetrate that barrier of time, so that language itself became a major metaphor, in the word-play and rhetoric, of the path to salvation. Words could lead the auditor beyond words to the level of intuitive assent. Both

Hooker and Andrewes, though, were primarily intellectual preachers.

Donne was not. The point has already been made that he approached doctrine in a much more intuitive and instinctive way than the other two.

Donne's poetic instincts led him to concentrate on the person and presence of Christ, the man and the god commingling. Donne's struggle to comprehend this ultimate paradox led to beautiful and complex use of metaphor, imagery and poetic devices such as internal rhymes, conso nance and juxtaposition. Further Donne's personality led him to attempt to mirror Christ's personality in his sermons. Consequently, Donne sought to leap space-time boundaries through an emotional recognition of Christ.

Hooker, then, was an expository preacher, objective, rational, with an exterior focus and an unshakeable faith. He placed no emphasis on the creative self, but instead sought to define faith through its corollary,

reason. Andrewes was more meditative, more in tune with the intuitive rhythms of faith in the mind, in their moments of weakness and strength.

Yet he too, placed no emphasis on the creative self, and was very rational in his approach to his material. Donne, on the other hand, played up the subjective element, making the creative self and attendant personality an integral part of the sermon. His thought is, far more than the others, yet

far less than some critics would have it, personal, meditative, and

interiorized. This is not to imply that he was introspective. Hooker was 112 far more that way than Donne. Rather, Donne used his own personality as the measure of Christ Incarnate's, and the congregation's, strengths and weaknesses. In Donne, we may perceive an active, inquiring mind at work, a mind crippled by human frailty, but also ennobled by a portion of the divine. More than any other preacher, Donne conveyed the com plexity of human experience, and the insatiable thirst for immortality of human aspiration. 113

Notes

1. Streeter, Restatement and Reunion, p. 42, quoted in Bicknell, A Theolo ical Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, Toronto, 1944 •

2. Donne, LXXX Sermons, number 79, quoted in Bush, English Litera ture of the Earlier Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1966), p. 326-327.

3. Bicknell, Thirty-Nine Articles, p. 7.

4. Bicknell, Thirty-Nine Articles, p. 33. 114-

Bibliography

Allen, D.C. "Dean Donne Sets His Text", ELH, X (194-3).

Andrewes, Lancelot. Sermons, ed. G.M. Story. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.

Aquinas. Philosophical Texts. London: Oxford, 1951. I2J I G; Jby. Aquinas. Theological Texts. London: Oxford, 1955. e cl. Gi ii>y.

Augustine. The City of God Against the Pagans, II. Cambridge: Harvard, 1963.

Bicknell, E.J. A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Toronto, Longmans, Green, 194-4-.

Bush, Douglas. English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966.

Carrithers, Gale. Donne at Sermons. Albany: S.U.N. Y., 1972.

Coleridge, S.T. Coleridge on the Seventeenth. Century, ed. R.F. Brinkman. Durham, N.C. Duke, 1955.

DeLara, D. "Richard Hooker's . Concept of Law," Anglican Theological . Quarterly, XLIV (1962).

Donne, John. Death's Duel. Menston: Scolar Press, 1972.

Donne, John. The Sermons of John Donne, ed. T.A. Gill. New York: Meridian, 1958.

Donne, John. Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels, ed. E. Simpson. Berkeley: California, 1963.

Eliot, T.S. Selected Prose. London: Faber, 1975.

Faulkner, R. "Reason and Revelation in Hooker's Ethics," American Political Science Review, LIX (1965).

Fish, S.E., ed. Seventeenth Century Prose: Modern Essays in Criticism. New York: Oxford, 1971.

Hill, W.S. ed. Studies in Richard ·Hoo.ker. C.tevelandg Case Western Reserve, 1972.

Hillerdal, Gunnar. Reason and Revelation ·in Richard Hooker. Lund: CWK, 1962. 115

Hooker, Richard. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity I-V. Cambridge: Belknap,1977. ed· j./;tI<:f(9r/ 5 /lS

Hooker, Richard. Works I-II, ed. J. Keble. New York: Appleton, 1851.

Hooper, R. Right Reason in the English Renaissance. Cambridge: Harvard, 1962.

Itrat-Husain. The Dogmatic and Mystical Theology of John Donne. New York: Macmillan, 1938.

Jackson, R.S. John Donne's Christian Vocation. Evanston: Northwestern, 1970.

LeComte, E. Grace to a Witty Sinner: A Life of Donne. New York: Walker, 1965.

Little, David. Religion, Order and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England. New York: Harper and Row, 1969.

Mazzeo, J. Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Studies. New York: Columbia, 1961+.

Mitchell, W.F. English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes ~o ~Plotsono London: S.P.C.K., 1932.

Munz, Peter. The Place of Hooker in the History of Though·~. Westport: Greenwood, 1971.

Novarr, David. The Making of Walton's.Lives. Ithaca: Cornell, 1958.

Ottley, R.L. Lancelot Andrewes. Cambridge: Riverside~ 18940

Pollard, A. Richard Hooker. London: Longmans, 1966.

Reidy, M.F. Bishop Lancelot Andrewes: Jacobean Court Preacher. Chicago: Loyola, 1955.

Schleiner, Winfried. The Imagery of John Donne's Serm:...on~o Providence~ Brown, 1970.

Simpson, Evelyn. A Study of the Prose Works· of John Donne. Oyiord~ Oxford, 1969.

Sisson, C.J. The JUdicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and.. the _I?irt~_.o(5l~ Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. London: ·Cambridge? 19~1Oo 116

Steuber, S.M. "The Balanced Diction of Hooker's Polity," PMLA, LXXI (1956).

Thornton, L. Richard Hooker: A Study of His Works. London: Macmillan, 1924.

Tulloch, J. Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Franklin, 1972.

Welsby, P.A. Lancelot Andrewes. London: S.P.C.K., 1958.

Williamson, G. The Senecan Amble. Chicago: Chicago, 1966.